


The mystery of Foxton Lake

by josephides



Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 62,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26918470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: Bran thought about it. “Regardless of species, the motives for murder are generally limited to a handful of reasons. Love, or more accurately, lust. Money. And of course hate in all its innumerable forms."OrBran and Leah go undercover.
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick
Comments: 26
Kudos: 194





	The mystery of Foxton Lake

Two hours into the drive, when all they had done was listen to the radio in silence, Leah put down her magazine. “Is this some kind of a test? To see if they can manage a pack by themselves?”

Bran cast her the barest glance. He appeared relaxed, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Leah gestured to the car and the road in front. “In, oh, nearly two centuries of marriage, we have never gone anywhere together.”

A second glance, this time dismissive. Perhaps he thought that still worked on her. Leah had been dismissed by him so thoroughly, so often, she was immune to it. “It’s all we did in the beginning.”

“To bring packs under your control. Not on one of your _investigations._ And we were never alone. One of your sons was always with us. Or Tag.” Leah leaned forward and started to rummage in the battered leather satchel at her feet. She pulled out a bag of trail mix. “Admit it, you’re testing Charles and Anna.”

Bran allowed her this. He held out his open hand to her, fingers beckoning. “It’s not a _test_.”

She grunted and poured out a handful of the mix into his palm. “Fine. What’s the plan? Which Alpha are you thinking of decapitating you give your feted son his own pack?”

Bran sighed. “Don’t be so bloodthirsty.”

“We don’t have territory enough for a new pack.”

“There’s always room.” Bran said nothing more for a few miles. They just munched in silence.

A song Leah liked came on the radio and she turned it up a little. “It would need to be a pack near us,” Leah mused, in between humming along. She daren’t sing. She could hold a tune but her voice was pale in comparison to the members of the Cornick clan. She had long learnt to keep quiet. “Because you need Anna.”

“I don’t _need_ Anna,” Bran muttered.

“I meant for the werewolves you Change, not specifically you.” No, Bran just needed Leah for his monster. Anna could certainly help – even Leah could begrudgingly give her that - but when it came down to it, it was Leah and their bond that truly calmed the beast inside him. “So, what, Colorado? Maybe the Portland pack? Morris is extremely stupid. Charles could depose him.”

“Leah,” he chided, but she knew he was amused. “I haven’t thought that far. I’m just giving Charles the opportunity of a little freedom from both of us.”

Bran not thinking ahead was exceptionally unlikely but she let it go. “He’ll just move your bookcases, again,” she said. It had annoyed Bran and he had spent weeks rearranging his office back to the way it had been, nudging the bookshelves half inch either way, never satisfied. “Have you even asked him whether it’s something he wants? Perhaps he likes being your Second, free to jet off at a moment’s notice. He wouldn’t be able to do that as an Alpha.”

Bran didn’t respond, just held his hand out for another palmful of trail mix.

*

Leah was familiar with the modern day process of joining a pack only on a purely academic level. Used to be, if you were a man, you just turned up and if you looked strong and stable, they’d take you in. Females, of course, never left the pack they were Changed into – not unless they married and mated out, like Leah had done.

It wasn’t like that now.

Nowadays, a pack looking for new members would get the word out, letting lone wolves or Alphas from other packs know that they were looking for applicants – male or female. Applicants would then be interviewed. Some packs held ‘trials’ to see what the new pack member was like before they committed to including them. The Foxton Lake pack fell into the latter bracket and Bran had apparently applied to join, with his mate, some weeks before.

Bran told her he expected this ‘trial’ to last no longer than two weeks, giving them more than enough time to work out what was killing off the members of this pack so effectively and why the Alpha hadn’t sought Bran’s support for help.

Bran gave her a run-down of the pack structure when they stopped for lunch. Batiste, the Alpha. He was unmarried and unmated and just shy of his first century and had been, as far as Bran was concerned, an utterly un-concerning Alpha for the last fifty years since he had established his own pack. They had only ever spoken on the phone and never met in person, so Bran wasn’t expecting to be recognized. His Second, Arnold, had been with the pack almost as long as it had been established and he had been Second for nearly twenty years. His third, Casper, was reasonably ‘new’, having celebrated a decade with the pack only a few months previously. Bran had very little information on Casper.

“None of them are mated?” It was unusual in a pack structure to have three leaders without a female.

Bran shook his head, not seeming to think this was much to comment on. He tossed the wrapper of his third burger into the trash can and then started on eating the remains of Leah’s fries without asking.

Leah’s more recent experience had taught her that there was a balance to be made in a pack structure, one that the mates of the top tier of the pack could provide. A woman’s voice was different than a man’s - a different perspective. 

Until Charles had mated with Anna, there had been a big gap between her and few other females in the pack. That wasn’t to say she didn’t relish that, because she did, but she had to admit that having Anna in the pack had… eased something in her. Which wasn’t just because she was an Omega.

At first Leah had struggled with Anna, finding herself challenging everything she said or did. It had been annoying to have another respected female in the pack with a voice people listened to. It took her a shade too long to realize that she was testing Anna, testing her loyalty and her ability to make the right decisions for the good of the pack because, in the end, that was all that mattered to Leah.

Eventually, Leah had come around to realizing that having Anna around was useful. She was a safe pair of hands.

Eventually.

*

They were, to Leah’s continuous amusement, going ‘undercover’. Bran was ‘Bryn’ for the next two weeks and Leah was ‘Leanne’. She had not chosen her own name, indeed Bran had chosen everything for her, some time before he had told her about this jaunt, which said much about his confidence that she would accept. Or perhaps he relied on the fact that she had no other choice.

Bryn and Leanne were recently mated, a match their previous Alpha had not agreed with, hence their decision to leave and seek an alternative pack. Angus was providing their cover story for this. Angus was well known for his ‘opinions’ on the love matches of his people and had really only just stopped making arranged marriages, which Leah imagined they were very grateful for.

As a couple, Bryn and Leanne were also supposedly quite young, which had certainly occupied much of Leah’s thoughts whilst she had been preparing for her role. Bran, of course, dedicated time to adjusting his behavior to the changing nature of humans, observing and learning where he could – part of how he ‘blended in’, as well as his own mysterious Other magics.

Leah had never bothered with this and had no understanding of what ‘young’ meant. She spent the last couple of weeks studying Kara and Anna, trying to observe the modern ways of young werewolves. All it seemed to her is that they lacked the basic instincts that their elders had - and had arrived in werewolf society still clinging to the modern thinking of the Twenty-First Century.

 _That_ was going to be challenging for Leah who had, by her own admission, quite old-fashioned notions. 

Still, there was a certain degree to which she could fake modernity. She bought herself a new cell phone and downloaded all the ‘apps’ that Kara recommended. She laboriously built herself a limited social media presence, keeping in mind that Angus – like Bran – was very strict with his people’s internet presence.

She roped Anna in to helping her with her clothes, at first going through her extensive wardrobe and picking out the items that she thought would work. Anna had pointed out that next to nothing would – weren’t ‘Bryn’ and ‘Leanne’ pretty broke? None of Leah’s recognizably designer clothes would be suitable. Even her day-to-day jeans were a big name label.

Leah had taken herself off to H&M in Helena and, tolerating Anna’s amused guidance, picked herself out some serviceable clothes more appropriate for the mate of a middle-rung dominant werewolf. This was armor of a different kind, she told herself. In this rare opportunity to work with Bran, she was damn well going to be convincing, even if that meant she had wear synthetic materials.

*

They were met by Arnold, in whose house they would be staying. Unlike _their_ Second, Arnold’s house was clearly used by many members of the pack. Some used it more permanently – he had three small guest rooms, two of which he rented out to other pack members, the third would temporarily be theirs.

And the room they were given was indeed _very_ small. Leah tried not to sigh, remembering that once she and Bran had shared a room no bigger than this. For _decades_. There was a small dresser and a small built-in closet. The bathroom was down the hall and she would be expected to share this and all bodily functions with the others. The walls were, also, very thin. She could hear someone breathing next door. There would be no private conversations between these four walls.

“This is great,” Bran said easily, sounding as if he really did think it was great. He put their shared suitcase on the bed.

Arnold adjusted a decorative wooden bowl on the dresser. He was a stockily-built man – broad shoulders, powerful legs, two or three inches taller than herself, and handsome with it. He had bright green eyes and very short, light-brown hair. “I know it’s pretty small. We remodeled a few years ago so we could have four bedrooms up here, instead of just three. But I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

Leah, not so good a liar, certainly not to other werewolves, said nothing and went to look out of the window. They had a view of the short front drive. To the left was an empty plot of land, where the foundations of a building had started to be laid but then clearly abandoned. Opposite them was a similar post-war era house with several cars in the drive, most of which appeared to have been stripped down for parts.

Leah glanced down and held back the urge to run her finger over the windowsill to see if it had been recently dusted. Leanne was probably too young to have exacting standards.

She might not be able to verbally lie but she could put on a good fake expression, after all, so when she turned, it was with wide-open eyes and an equally wide smile. “Can I do anything to help with dinner?” she asked.

Arnold gave her a small, polite smile. She didn’t miss his flicker of a glance down her body and then up again. It was the third time he had done it. “We’re going to Batiste’s house tonight so you can get to know a few more people.”

“Ideal,” she said.

Bran, or ‘Bryn’, came to stand beside her. He put his hand on her back, moved his thumb back and forth in a small stroking motion. It was the sort of comforting gesture Leah had seen couples make in difficult situations. He had never, in their lives together, done it to her. “Looking forward to it,” he said, with a smile.

*

At dinner, Bran’s hand rested casually on Leah’s thigh throughout the meal. She wondered at it. Was it in case she miss-stepped and he needed to warn her? Did he think she wasn’t capable of maintaining her persona? That was insulting.

She tried to ignore him, instead focused on getting to know the faces and people around her whilst Bran made small talk. There were eighteen members of the pack and that evening six, plus the Alpha and his Second, were accounted for. They were all very young and Leah’s face started to ache from all the smiling she was doing. It was quite challenging maintaining a constantly ‘likable’ persona. Normally, when she visited another pack her view was that they could love her or hate her – she was the Marrok’s wife and above them all.

Naturally, there were questions for them. Most of these she deferred to her husband. Bran’s ‘Bryn’ was a bit of a _bon viveur_ , as Bran accentuated his natural inclination to tell tales. He was a good narrator and she had always enjoyed it when he told the pack stories. Now, as he told the much edited tale of how he and ‘Leanne’ had met, she had the oddest memory of him reading to her before bed. A long time ago. When they had been newly married, perhaps?

She struggled to make the memory form, as if it wasn’t quite real. Had he really done that? It seemed so extraordinarily unlikely.

Quietly, Leah reminded him of it that night, as they were undressing for bed. She had bought new pajamas – a shorts and T-shirt set with unicorns and clouds on a blue background. Bran gave this outfit a double-take before replying. “You had difficulty sleeping,” he confirmed.

“So you did? And I did?” She didn’t remember that at all.

Bran’s expression was serious. “The mating bond initially troubled you.”

Leah paused in unravelling her hair. “That’s right. I forgot,” she murmured.

How could she have forgotten that? In the end, he had been forced to control it, reduce it down to the bare minimum. At the moment, they could tell where each other was but that was about it. It suited him, she thought. He didn’t want anyone in his head, even her.

“Headaches. I had terrible headaches.” The memory seemed unfold now that she had found the first thread of it and tugged it to its conclusion.

Bran nodded. “That’s right.”

They climbed into bed together. There was only just enough room that if they lay very straight they wouldn’t touch. By silent agreement they had left off the comforter. Leah lay on her front, face turned towards the window, her back to Bran. The pipes in the house clanked loudly as someone down the hall showered. They had met the other two occupants of the household that night - Casper, the Third, and the other most recent pack member, Fergus. Casper had also looked her up and down with great interest. Her first response had been to return it but it wasn’t something Leanne would do. Leanne only had eyes for her husband.

“Do you think it still would?” she asked. She had been young when they had mated – only a little older than Anna, really, and Bran was a great Power. In a rare moment of sympathy, he had told her Blue Jay Woman had also struggled with the mental connection between them and _she_ had been a Shaman’s daughter.

“I’m not sure. We could try, when we’re back home.”

She nodded. “I’d like that.”

Leah felt the whisper-soft drift of his hand across her back and then she was asleep.

*

The first full day of their ‘trial’, Bran was taken on a tour of the pack’s territory by Casper, the Third, during which she knew he planned to ask after the pack’s recent losses. Leah, being a mere female, was apparently expected to spend her time with the only other female in the pack, a woman who had a part-time job at the local school as a teaching assistant but for the rest of her time seemed to go from the Alpha’s house to the Second’s, cooking and cleaning.

Today was – lucky Leah – a cooking and cleaning day.

“There’s not a lot of work around in town at the moment,” Beth explained as she drove them to Batiste’s house. “So Batiste suggested this. He pays me a good wage and for the most part it’s kind of okay. They’re not _total_ slobs.”

As Leah had seen last night, Batiste had the largest house, as would be expected, and he lived further on the outskirts of town on a few acres of land that his ‘family’ had owned for generations. 

In the grey morning daylight, Leah was able to observe it in more detail than she had done the previous evening. It was a typical two story Colonial American house, with pale gray siding that needed a little touching up. The front yard was very untidy – the grass patchy and the borders full of weeds and straggly plants. Leah liked to garden and her fingers itched to get to work.

Instead, she put another fixed smile on her face and made to charm Beth.

“Goodness. This must be a big job. Are you the only one who cleans?” Leah asked, as she helped take things out of the cupboard under the stairs where all the cleaning products were stored. Leah had help to clean her own house – she had a cleaning company come in twice a month, the limit of Bran’s patience with ‘strangers’ – otherwise it would literally be all she did, every day.

Beth shook her hair and the two baby-fair braids that ran down her back wobbled. “No, Rolf – did you meet Rolf at dinner last night? – he does a shift on Saturdays. His wife just had a baby so they need the money.”

Leah hadn’t wanted for money since she had married Bran – to be blunt, it had been integral to their mating bargain – but she could sympathize and verbally did so. Good naturedly, Beth shrugged it off, said it could be worse, that she knew Batiste would always take care of her. “Besides, I live in my mom’s house – so at least I don’t have to pay rent. Though goodness knows the place could do with a bit of modernization.”

Beth then set about giving Leah a general idea of the kind of work she did in the house. Once briefed, Leah left Beth scrubbing the downstairs bath and, on the proviso of ‘starting’ on the upstairs, intended to snoop around the Alpha’s suite. She opened the door and abruptly stopped herself before entering. She had to remember she wasn’t the Marrok’s wife and these people weren’t ‘her’ people.

“Beth?” she called.

“Yeah?”

 _Yes_ , Leah thought in irritation. ‘Yeah’ and ‘Hey’ were two of her language pet peeves. “Are we allowed to clean the Alpha’s room?”

“Um. Yes. But—” Beth came out of the downstairs bath and stood at the base of the stairs, looking up at Leah. She looked embarrassed. “He’s kind of particular. Doesn’t like his stuff moved and shouts if I do. I usually just vacuum and wipe down the bathroom.”

Leah nodded. Bran was much the same. In the end, she had given him the responsibility of keeping his office clean. “Fine.”

However, Leah was _not_ going to ‘just vacuum’ because being in the Alpha’s suite made her skin crawl and she didn’t care if he shouted at her. No Alpha should live in such a state. Also – she reasoned – if ‘Leanne’ wanted to impress the Alpha during her trial, maybe she would go above and beyond to do so. Perhaps she would be given more leeway.

So thinking, Leah stripped the bed, then checked all the other rooms on the second floor and stripped theirs as well, and tossed everything in the wash downstairs. She took a picture of Batiste’s untidy dresser, his desk, his shelves, then removed and dusted everything before wiping down all the surfaces. She took the rugs outside, leading to a painful conversation with Beth about vacuuming rugs _not_ being as effective as draping them over a railing outside and beating the dirt from them. This was the disappointing sort of thing the modern youth were not taught, Leah thought.

Then Leah bleached and scrubbed Batiste’s bathroom and tackled the lime-scale and soap scum on the walls of his shower, rinsed the whole place down and then dried it with a towel she intended to put on to wash after the linen was done. Then she washed the floors and, in bare feet, remade the bed and cleaned the windows. She studied the photographs she had taken and very carefully replaced every item on each surface in the exact position she found it, even if part of her wanted to arrange things more neatly.

When she was done with his room, she vacuumed the hall and the other rooms – in a significantly less unpleasant state – and made the beds, cleaned the windows and cleaned the upstairs bath that they all shared. Lastly, she put the towels on to wash and surveyed the work Beth had done on the downstairs. 

“What about food?” Leah asked, when she was satisfied.

Beth was pulling the furniture back in the living room, having clearly moved everything to vacuum. “I took out some steaks. Thought we could make something with that. Maybe a stew.”

Leah marched into the kitchen and winced at the packet of steaks on the counter. They were not a quality of meat she would feed her pack. “How many are we feeding?”

“I don’t know – I usually just bulk it out with vegetables and leave it for them to reheat.”

Leah opened the refrigerator and investigated the frozen compartment, opened a few other cupboards. “I could make a pot pie,” she said, considering.

“Is there pastry?”

“No, but there’s flour and butter. I could just make some.”

Beth’s eyebrows rose as if this was an impressive feat. “Can I watch?”

Whilst the filling was stewing, Leah gave Beth a very basic introduction to making a quick pastry topping. Beth took notes on her cell phone when Leah wasn’t giving her a more hands-on demonstration. “Did your mom teach you this?” Beth asked as she mixed the dough.

Leah’s mother had been from a wealthy New England family and hadn’t stepped foot in a kitchen in her life. So, no. “It was more learning by doing,” she said, because this was the truth. There had come a point in Leah’s life where it had been learn to cook or starve. And the appliances in the modern kitchen was significantly more convenient than the woodburning stoves she had learnt on.

They made enough filling for two pies – Leah gently nudging Beth to add more seasoning - and whilst it was cooling and the pastry was chilling, they cleaned the kitchen together. Beth was a hard worker, Leah observed, and didn’t shy away from tasks. Leah had overseen many sloppy staff in her life – both before when she had been human and after – and this girl wasn’t one of them.

She was also endearingly child-like. Perhaps it was the fair hair or the large, velvety brown eyes or maybe the dimples in her cheeks. She wasn’t particularly dominant, which was definitely part of the appeal for Leah, who couldn’t walk into a room without wanting to physically assert herself. The moment Beth had made eye contact with Leah, she had submitted herself with barely any bother whatsoever. It was always a relief when that happened.

Feeling like they’d built up enough of a rapport that Leah could conceivably ask difficult questions, she broached the topic that Bran was tackling with Casper. “I heard that your pack has lost a couple of pack members recently.”

Beth bit her lip, pausing to rinse out her cloth. “Yeah. It’s been pretty shocking. But, please don’t think that sort of thing is usual here. It’s really not.”

“Of course,” Leah said, choosing to focus on the fact that yes, it was _very_ unusual, and therefore not making it sound like a lie. “Do you know what happened?”

Beth radiated anxiety suddenly. “I… overhead some things. Batiste didn’t really want us talking about it. I think Greg drowned in Sawmill Creek – which is pretty treacherous. Lots of kids get caught out each summer. But Kirk was in some kind of accident with some farming equipment at work.”

Leah winced – and it was a natural response. She had in her life seen plenty of accidents involving heavy machinery, though admittedly few that killed a werewolf. What they had heard, what Bran had told her when he had got hold of the coroner’s report, was that Kirk had been beheaded. An impressively precise accident. The one thing that a werewolf couldn’t come back from. Drowning, too, was convenient. It was a common suicide method for their kind.

“Was Greg… unhappy?” Leah applied extra elbow grease to the stove top she was cleaning, trying to make it appear as if she was more focused on this task than eking out answers from Beth. 

Beth shrugged. “I wouldn’t say he was very upbeat. He got fixated on things. Hobbies and the like and then gave up on them. He was pretty old,” she said blithely unware that Greg had been half a century younger than Leah. Beth had yet to celebrate a decade as a werewolf. “Batiste said that sometimes older werewolves go a little crazy.”

Beth delivered this last line with a sort of questioning look, as if Leah – a few years wiser – might have more information on the subject. Leah nodded. “I’ve heard that can happen,” she said, carefully. “Do you think that’s what happened to Greg then?”

“I think maybe he wanted to die. Everyone was pretty sad. He was…. gentlemanly.”

Leah paused and arched her eyebrows. “Are there… not gentlemanly men in the pack?” she asked wryly.

The younger woman’s mouth puckered. “Well. Maybe I’m just old fashioned.”

Seemed unlikely. “Who?” Leah whispered, trying to strike the fine balance of ‘girlish gossip’ and not ‘tell me so I might exact vengeance’.

But Beth wasn’t going to give in. She shook her head. “You’ll be okay. You’re with Bryn.”

Leah would be ‘okay’ because if anyone made any untoward advances on her she would cut their balls off, but that was neither here nor there.

Beth changed the subject. “Do you think the fillings are cool enough to put the pastry on?”

*

Beth dropped Leah off at the Second’s house. “I’ll come by tomorrow morning at nine. We’re doing this house tomorrow. Sorry,” she said, biting her lip. “Probably in your old pack you had more interesting things to do.”

“I like cleaning,” Leah said easily and truthfully.

For her background, Leanne’s employment ‘history’ involved the usual sort of odd jobs that a career-less pack member might do for their Alpha – including working for Angus’s tech company as a receptionist, as well as being a shop assistant, a delivery driver. Of course, the reality was Leah hadn’t actually had any form of a job in her life. She was, in some senses, ‘just’ a housewife – though that didn’t really encapsulate the full scale of what being the mate of an Alpha involved. Particularly an Alpha like Bran, with a pack like theirs.

She wished Beth a good evening and, using the key that she had been given, let herself into the Second’s house. She could tell immediately that no one was home and for a moment she was at a loss as to what she would do with herself. Had she been at home, her own home, Leah would have curled up in the living area with a magazine, maybe put on a TV show. She didn’t feel she could do that here. It felt a little as if she was being watched. And judged.

Leah messaged Bran regarding his ETA – with very little hope that he would reply, given his dislike of cell phones – and then wandered into the kitchen, familiarizing herself with the contents of the refrigerator, looking in the cupboards. If she and Beth were expected to make a large batch meal from what would be available, they would be hard pressed to do so. She wondered if there was a chest freezer somewhere and she walked around the first floor, opening doors in case there was a basement, then going outside to see if the door of the garage opened. It was locked.

Her phone beeped and saw a message from Bran. _30 minutes_. _I suspect they are expecting you to provide dinner. This appears to be a test of your ingenuity._

Leah gaped at the screen and quickly typed a response. _Honestly????_

 _We have unknowingly travelled back in time_ , came her husband’s response. Then a moment later, _It will be for four, if that helps. Fergus has back to back shifts._

She hurried back inside and reviewed her options furiously. She tossed a packet of frozen beef mince on the counter. Some finely chopped onions and eggs to bind and she’d have burger patties. She had a quick burger bun recipe but that needed instant yeast. She rifled through the cupboard, pulling out flour, sugar and – as luck would have it – some packets of instant yeast that hadn’t expired. If she bulked up the beef with breadcrumbs, she might be able to get eight burgers which still wouldn’t be enough to feed hungry werewolves. Maybe they could have mashed potato? There was some fresh corn, too. Bran loved corn.

Feeling this was unreasonably stressful, Leah got to grips with the defrost setting on the microwave – which she wouldn’t have had to use if someone had _warned her_ she would be making dinner – and then pulled together the dough for the hamburger buns so she could give them time to prove. Then she peeled the potatoes, putting them on to boil just as she heard the truck pull up outside.

“Smile,” she told herself, sticking her starchy fingers into her cheeks to remind herself of how to do it. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth so hard.

Not surprisingly, Bran made sure to find her first – sliding into the kitchen on socked feet, an expression of apology on his youthfully handsome face. Like Leah, Bran had adjusted his clothes to suit his undercover persona, though he’d had an easier time of it. The jeans were his own, ripped and well-worn as they were, but he had a checked flannel shirt worn over a white T-shirt, neither of which featured a cartoon character or bright colors. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said.

 _Sweetheart?_ Hard pressed to keep her expression of abject revulsion off her face, Leah nevertheless replied knowing they were no doubt being listened to. “Hi!” she said, brightly. “I got a start on dinner as I wasn’t sure what the plans were. All this can keep if we’re going out.”

Casper pushed through the door next, surveyed the scene and appeared satisfied. He was dressed similarly to Bran, though she noted his jeans were in rather better condition. “We’re staying in tonight. What are we having?” His smile was toothy, faintly rapacious. She had got hot whilst she was cooking and taken off her sweater, leaving her in a white vest top that she had right up until that moment considered to be perfectly respectable. His eyes lingered on her breasts.

She managed to keep a smile on her face. She found if she fixed her eyes just to the left of Casper’s face it was easier. “Oh, just burgers and all the trimmings. Mashed potatoes. Corn.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Bran asked, putting his hand on her lower back and affecting an interest in the burger buns that were proving.

“Oh, no, I’m sure you’ve had a tough day,” she said, time travelling herself. _Put your feet up, honey. Shall I get your slippers?_ As if she hadn’t scrubbed the Alpha’s toilet today, too.

“Leave your wife to it, Bryn,” Casper said, slapping Bran on his shoulder. “She’s got it all under control.”

Bran’s mouth twitched infinitesimally. “She certainly does, doesn’t she,” he murmured. “Thanks, sweetheart.” _I sincerely hope I will not be punished for this later,_ he told her mentally as Casper coaxed him from the kitchen.

*

Dinner was silent, which was about as good a compliment as Leah was going to get. She ate her meal slowly, just in case someone decided they wanted a third burger and she would have to give hers up. She wasn’t sure what possessed her, really. It wasn’t as if she and Bran were really on ‘trial’. What did she care what they thought of her ability to throw together a last minute dinner?

In fact, Leah grew annoyed – she’d just set ‘Leanne’ up for a lifetime of servitude, surely?

“This was delicious,” Arnold sighed, putting down his gnawed corn husk. He patted his lips with the kitchen towel she had laid out. “Really, Leanne. Spectacular.”

Arnold immediately went into Leah’s good book. There were very few names in Leah’s good book. 

Casper belched into his fist. “I second that.”

Bran, whose hand had once again been on her thigh all evening, squeezed her slightly. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

 _Bit much_ , Leah thought at him, wishing as she always did that he could hear her. She forced a smile, though. “I love cooking,” she said, the only thing she could respond with that didn’t sound like a lie.

There was, apparently, some kind of sporting endeavor on that evening which Leah declined to view. It was made clear in that way men did, however, that Bran was expected to join in, as if enjoying watching sports would somehow make him a more valuable member of the pack. Bran made the appropriate noises that implied both a great interest and some form of prior knowledge of said sport and then, with a sheepish smile, said he’d be in trouble if he didn’t help Leah with the dishes first.

 _That_ was certainly true.

Alone, together, but within earshot of the two other werewolves, Leah amused herself by instigating a fake, very married conversation the likes of which she would never normally have with him.

“Tell me honesty, did you think there was too much onion in the burger?” she asked him earnestly, putting the dirty plates in the dishwasher.

“No, it was perfect,” Bran said, mouth twitching as he rinsed dishes for her.

She batted her eyelashes at him. “Was the seasoning in the mashed potatoes all right? Not too salty?”

“More than all right. It was delicious.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I think it went well, didn’t it?” she said brightly. “There’s not much left in the refrigerator, though. I guess I’ll ask Beth what the grocery routine is. Maybe I should go shopping.” Leah pulled out a disinfectant spray and nudged it pointedly in his direction.

Bran ran a dishcloth under the faucet and dutifully began cleaning the counters. “Hmm. I’ll check with Arnold. I’m not sure _our_ budget quite stretches to a big shop.”

Oh, yes, of course. They were ‘broke’. “We should do something to contribute though, at least. We’re eating, too,” she reminded him, semi-seriously.

“I know, sweetheart. I’ll ask.”

This time, Leah pulled a ‘blech’ face at the endearment. _Honey?_ he suggested, his mental voice tinged with humor. _Snookums?_ At her even more repulsed look, Bran grinned. 

He was having too much fun with this, Leah decided. “Well, I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too late, _babe_ ,” she said tartly.

*

In their room, Leah futzed around her cell phone for a while after she had got ready for bed. She could hear the sounds of a TV crowd and the occasional excited exclamations from her male housemates. Occasionally, she even heard Bran. She was curious to know if he was really having a good time. It wasn’t often that he spent an evening watching sport. From her experience, if he wanted to ‘relax’, he would do so with a book, maybe some music. The only sport she had ever seen him watch on television before was curling.

Eventually, she turned out the light and tried to relax. She really needed to make a plan for tackling Beth the next day, get some more details from her. Cleaning this house would also give her an opportunity to snoop. She’d gathered what she could from Batiste’s bedroom – she’d spent some of her evening reviewing the photographs she’d taken, looking for anything unusual - and would hopefully do the same for Arnold’s and Casper’s.

Bran came up shortly before midnight. He used the shared bathroom first before creeping into their bedroom as if he was genuinely being considerate in case she might be asleep. He changed, silently, and then crawled beneath the sheets and then over her.

Leah wasn’t an exhibitionist. When Bran made his intentions clear, she froze in horror. “No,” she whispered, stiff and unresponsive beneath him.

“No?” he repeated. She may have astonished him more than this before but she couldn’t recall it. He knew her almost better than she knew herself, often knew how she would react before she did.

“Everyone can hear us,” she hissed. She could hear Casper next door, opening and closing drawers like he was in the room with them.

Bran frowned at her, as if this was somehow irrelevant. He tried to kiss her again and she turned her head to the side. “Really?” 

“I—” Leah couldn’t explain it. She wasn’t ashamed of sex – never had been, never would, and naturally any opportunity to be with Bran she took. She just liked her privacy. The thought that members of this pack, this middling, unimportant pack, would hear her and Bran – _their Marrok_ – being intimate made her cringe. 

Bran sighed. He pressed a kiss to her cheek rolled off of her. “All right. I understand.”

She squirmed uncomfortably. She hadn’t, that she had ever recalled, said no to him before. When they were together, nothing made her feel quite as good as he did, so she was only disappointing herself. And she knew well that he used her to assuage his wolf, that it was part of the mating bargain they had made. “Maybe tomorrow we could find somewhere more private,” she whispered, guiltily.

“Where would you suggest? The garage?” he asked wryly. 

Comforted that he was taking this well, Leah smirked. “I mean, if you can find a key and we could be alone for five minutes, maybe.”

“Five minutes?” Bran grunted. “That’s flattering.”

She snorted and rolled onto her side, her back to him. “Realistic perhaps,” she teased, very, very quietly. 

Bran pinched her side. “I heard that.”

*

Bran tried his luck again in the morning but this time the sound of Casper and Arnold having a loud conversation outside their door, the floorboards creaking under their feet, halted even him. Her mate rested his forehead on her shoulder and sighed. It amused her that this was something that was out of his control, that he hadn’t planned for the removal of what she knew he saw as his fundamental marital right.

The monster inside would be fine for a couple of days, she reassured herself. Leah took the opportunity to stroke his back. “Do you think I’m supposed to make breakfast?” she whispered to his temple.

Bran rubbed his cheek against hers briefly and then sat up. “You’re not going to,” he said firmly. Apparently he had decided there was only so far he was willing to tolerate this ‘testing’ of his wife. Outside, Casper and Arnold moved away. “I’ve managed to level my dominance with Casper’s. I think it’s put him on edge.”

She nodded. She had wondered where he might place himself in the pack structure. “Would that affect his vote in our trial, do you think?” she wondered, mostly out of academic interest. She knew if a female joined their pack who was as dominant, or more so, than Leah, she would be instinctively very against them, even though she technically took Bran’s position in the pack. Sage had been originally very challenging for her, for that reason. Rightly so, in the end.

Bran grunted and went through their meagre selection of clothes. Their combined belongings only filled the two top drawers of the dresser, her clothes mixing with his. “If anything, his natural competitiveness should make him want to see who would be more dominant and want to keep me around. Can you wear one of my T-shirts today?”

Since Leah was cleaning again, she was more than happy to. “Of course. Why?”

Her mate tossed a T-shirt towards her and smirked. “ _Bryn_ doesn’t like the way Casper is looking at you and has limited options of politely indicating his disapproval.”

“Ah,” Leah said. How could she forget the particular invasion of his roving eyes? At dinner, she had wondered if Beth had been implying Casper was the ‘ungentlemanly’ problem. “Neither does Leanne, when it comes down to it.”

There was no denying that Leah enjoyed a flirt, when the opportunity arose, but she did so knowing she had no intention of taking it further than that. Casper, on the other hand, was being impolite. The female half of newly mated couple, ostensibly less dominant than he, was not fair game. 

By the time Leah was dressed, the men had already left. Bran or, rather, ‘Bryn’ had thoughtfully made her an omelet, which she ate standing up, and then she emptied the dishwasher and refilled it with the dishes that had been left in the sink.

When Beth arrived, Leah was going through the cupboards again, looking for inspiration. “Is there a chest freezer? I couldn’t find one yesterday.” she asked.

“It’s in the garage. Key’s by the back door,” Beth said, showing Leah a little cubby hole that she had entirely missed yesterday. “In any case, I’m due to do a big shop and I thought I’d go today. Do you want to come with?”

Leah thought about it. She would be able to snoop far better if Beth wasn’t in the house. “Why don’t I stay here and get started on cleaning the house?” she suggested.

It was clear that this was more than Beth had been expecting and it was an idea she liked. Clearly grocery shopping was preferential to cleaning. Leah did not feel the same way. Cleaning she could do on her own. Grocery stores were full of humans. “Are you sure? Maybe you’d rather do the groceries?”

Leah shook her head. “I’m not familiar with what people like. Bryn and I would like to contribute, though,” she added.

“Oh, no, Batiste won’t have that. You’re our guests!”

Guests who were expected to cook and clean, apparently. “Hardly,” Leah murmured. “Let me give you something.”

“No,” Beth said, her chin firming. “It’s not right.”

Leah held up her hands, feeling she’d played along enough. “All right. Shall we make a shopping list?”

They made a list, Leah asking questions about how often they ate together at the Second’s house so she could at least make a vague meal plan. She made sure there were enough ‘quick dinners’ that someone – even if it was her – would be able to pull together short notice and then she and Beth went to check out the chest freezer. As Leah had expected, there was a lot of frozen meat, vegetables, even some pies that looked like they had been bought from a farmer’s market. She decided to transfer a few things to the kitchen. 

“I, ah, think quite a few of us are coming here for dinner tonight,” Beth whispered, as if she was conveying a state secret and someone in the house might possibly overhear. As far as Leah knew, everyone was out. “Batiste, too.”

Leah’s mouth twitched. “I see. Well. Do you know how many?”

“I would think a dozen?”

She nearly rolled her eyes. “Good thing you’re going shopping,” she said. She hoped Bran’s ‘tests’ were as irritating as hers were.

*

Leah cleaned the bathroom, their room, Fergus’s small double, Arnold’s neat-as-a-pin bedroom suite and the tiny office before tackling Casper’s room. By the time she got to his room, she reeked of cleaning products and bleach and it amused her to think that any titillation he got from having her in his private space would be tainted. His room, much like Arnold’s, didn’t reveal much of any interest, though he was by no means as tidy as the Second. 

She was carrying a load of laundry down the stairs when Beth returned so she dumped everything in the washer and went to help her carry in the groceries. She listened with half an ear to Beth’s chatter, the cadence of her happy voice rising and falling as she described a series of encounters at the grocery store, before segueing swiftly into a discussion of what they would be making for dinner.

“A chicken curry,” Leah said, shortly. It was one of the meals that went down well at home and came with lots of ‘sides’, which she had asked Beth to buy. She and Beth had a brief discussion about levels of spiciness, agreeing that – like most werewolves – their taste-buds wouldn’t tolerate too much heat. She took Beth through the recipe as she lined up the ingredients on the counter.

“Do you have a lot of recipes memorized?” Beth asked curiously, playing with the end of one of her plaits.

She hadn’t really thought about it. She did have recipe books at home, well used ones, but supposed many of the meals she made she did so from memory. “I guess I do. At least, a few staples.”

“I mostly make stews. I can do cookies and brownies, too.”

“No doubt they’re popular,” Leah said, feeling unusually kind.

Since Beth seemed keen to help, she set her the task of preparing the marinade for the chicken, which they would need to leave for as long as possible. “This one is really easy,” Leah told her, finding the enthusiastic audience a novelty. She wrote down the recipe for her. “It’s basically one pot and it’s pretty forgiving. Whilst it’s marinating, we can start on the first floor since I’ve done upstairs.”

Hands stained from the spice mix, Beth nodded enthusiastically, accepting Leah’s instruction easily. “It already smells great,” she said, cheerfully.

With two, cleaning and tidying the first floor took no time at all, so they decided to take down the drapes in the living room and wash them in the upstairs tub as well, Beth flushing pink when she saw how dirty the water was.

“I had no idea,” she said, clearly embarrassed.

“Don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t your responsibility,” Leah scoffed. “If they wanted a housekeeper, they’d employ one. This is just your part-time job.”

“I guess.”

They put the drapes out to dry outside since Leah wasn’t certain they would do well in the dryer and there was a good drying breeze. “Next time,” she said gleefully, as they carried fresh bedding upstairs, “we’ll do the couch cushions. Bet that’ll be _disgusting_.”

Leah had to admit, there was more than a little satisfaction in making the house look spick and span. She may have made a few ‘tweaks’ to the furniture layout in the living area, just for the purposes of making the space flow better, and she and Beth certainly took out a great deal of aggression on the area rugs outside.

By the time the first of the evening’s guests arrived – Rolf, his wife, and their baby - the drapes were more or less dry and hung back up so the creases would drop back out and Leah was pleased with how fresh everything looked. They’d also hooked up Beth’s cell phone to the speaker system and Leah was being treated to a musical education which wasn’t completely intolerable. It was funny how modern people didn’t seem to like silence.

“Something smells amazing,” Rolf’s human wife, Annalise, cooed, sniffing appreciatively and heading straight for the big pot on the stove. “Is this curry?”

“It is!” Beth excitedly took Annalise through the other dishes they had made that were keeping warm in the oven, describing how each and every one of them had been made – Bombay potatoes, dhal, creamed spinach – as well as a huge pot of washed and ready-to-be-cooked rice. There was also naan and some chutneys that Beth had apparently enjoyed choosing from the store.

After greeting her, Rolf offered Leah the baby to hold, as if this might possibly be the sort of thing she would enjoy. “No, thank you, I would rather not,” Leah said, bluntly, shaking her hands out in front of her, as if to ward the child off.

This seemed to amuse rather than offend Rolf, who was cradling his baby in his arm effortlessly. It was very small, with a profusion of dark, curling hair like its father’s. She couldn’t, at a glance, tell if it was a boy or a girl. “Afraid you’ll crush him?”

A boy then. “Pretty much.”

This was not a new feeling for Leah. She didn’t really think she had a maternal bone in her body and human babies were very soft and squidgy. Occasionally, _very_ occasionally, she might have had a fleeting thought about what a child of her union with Bran might look like but it was with really very academic interest rather than a sense of longing.

Besides, the number of orphaned – or at least vulnerable – children who had passed through Aspen Creek could not be believed. Each time Bran had handed them off to more appropriate foster parents, to Leah’s intense relief. The only child she had ever hesitated over had been Kara and even then she and Bran had discussed it and agreed that their lives were too dangerous even for a werewolf child.

After Rolf and his family came two more bachelors, both of whom teased Beth mercilessly about her ‘stew’ smelling funny, which Beth took with sisterly resignation. Leah hadn’t met them before as they hadn’t been at the Alpha’s dinner but their faces lit up when they were introduced. She mentally placed both of them higher in the pack than Rolf and suffered through polite, but strangely loaded conversation about her husband and mate - when they had met, how long they had been together. They somehow managed to imply that the relationship might be temporary. She wondered if this was normal – she had been married for so long, and to a man so untouchable, that it was possible that these were questions she was simply never asked out of fear of offending her.

Thankfully, Bran was next to return with Arnold and Casper and Leah happened to be looking out of the window when they did, which meant she was able to refuse all three of them entry.

“Take all of that off,” she demanding, pointing to their clothes and boots, absolutely caked in mud. “The floors have only just been cleaned.”

The ones she was not mated to gave her expressions of abject surprise. “Sincerely?” Arnold asked. He admittedly wasn’t as badly affected as Bran and Casper were. She could only assume they had been _rolling_ in mud.

She narrowed her eyes threateningly. “Unless you want to clean the floors again yourself.” She then recalled that, technically, Arnold was hierarchically superior to her. “Please,” she added, resentfully.

Eyes twinkling with amusement, Bran was already stripping down to his underwear, his toned but permanently winter-pale body on display for all to see. Living out into the backwoods of Montana as they did, this was not his first rodeo. He piled his things neatly on the front porch. “May I leave these here?”

“Absolutely. I’ll deal with them later.”

Then, because Bryn was like that, he kissed her briefly as he entered and jogged up the stairs.

Arnold and Casper undressed, the former with a frown, the latter with a smirk. Like Leah’s husband, they were both fine physical specimens, so had nothing of which to be ashamed. Indeed, as they walked through the house to the stairs, they received a ribald round of applause from the gathered pack-mates.

Casper bowed with a flourish, his white-blonde curls dancing. She had been given to understand that his real name was not Casper and that his extremely pale coloring had led to this nickname. “Thank you, thank you. Remember to tip our hostess.” He turned to give Leah a big wink, at which she rolled her eyes.

Bran returned fifteen minutes later, hair damp from a quick shower and she watched him prowl around the kitchen, investigating. She was being entertained by Fergus, whom she’d only fleetingly met before. He was a tall man with a shock of red hair, darker than Tag’s, and had returned home loaded down with bottles of beer, wearing sweats and an air of quiet exhaustion. He was a nurse, which surprised Leah. She had thought human healthcare wasn’t a profession most werewolves could tolerate – her step-son being an exception. None of the Cornicks really fit the ‘standard’ werewolf mold.

“I was training as a doctor when I was Changed,” Fergus explained, whilst Leah tried to recall what she had been told about him. Like the rest of the pack, he wasn’t very old, she thought, though this wasn’t his first pack. “And I decided my skills would be better served being the strongest nurse at the hospital.” So saying, he lifted his his arms to the side and flexed. He was extremely thin. Only the fact that he was a werewolf meant that he was strong – there was no evidence from his body musculature that this was the case.

Leah smiled politely. “You aren’t from around here, then,” she said, sipping from her bottle. In full Bryn mode, Bran slid his arm around her waist and leaned against her side, drinking from his own beer, apparently content to let her keep up the conversation without him chipping in. She was unnerved by how quickly she had become used to him touching her.

“No, I was actually Changed in Florida.” Leah winced, dramatically, and he laughed. “Yes, the heat and the humidity basically drove me out. I don’t know how Corbyn’s pack survives out there.”

Leah had often wondered the same thing. She’d visited Corbyn in Miami a couple of times. The first time to kill a vampire at Bran’s request. Even back in the 60s, he’d had a truly preposterous house, absolutely spectacular views of the water, but each time she stepped outside she had felt drugged. She thought it was sheer stubbornness that kept him in a state where for two thirds of the year he would be trapped inside with the air conditioning. Never mind the hurricanes.

“You guys are from Seattle? What’s that like?” Fergus asked.

Leah wrinkled her nose. It was easy to answer this without it being a lie. She had spent quite a lot of time in Seattle, with and without the Seattle pack, so she could also answer from the viewpoint of generality. “It’s got its good points. There’s lots to do, of course. And lots of work,” she added, remembering her ‘eclectic’ employment history. “And it’s not too hard to get out to go for a good run. It’s the Emerald City for a reason, after all.”

Fergus nodded. “What’s Angus like?”

Leah smiled, making sure it was a little reserved given they were supposed to be unhappy enough to leave. “Bombastic. Opinionated. Hard working. He can be kind,” she added, speaking from personal experience. He had been one of the first of Bran’s Alphas that Leah had met and he had always treated her with respectful deference, never giving her that slightly knowing look that the others did.

“You sound fond of him.”

“I… am,” she said, slowly. She looked at Bran, inviting him to join in. “I think we both are.”

Bran nodded, apparently unwilling to participate more. His thumb rubbed her side. She wondered what they had done during the day that had made him so pensive.

Beth scurried into the kitchen. “Everyone’s here,” she said, excitedly. “Shall we serve?”

*

Leah had a lovely evening. She couldn’t deny it. She regularly cooked meals for a crowd at home but there was something utterly validating cooking for people who didn’t know her, who hadn’t tried everything she had ever made, who complimented everything they ate as if it was something extraordinary instead of Leah’s ‘same-old, same-old’ cuisine.

She spent the evening in a state of perpetual pleasure - a warm, soft feeling that made her feel very relaxed. She even enjoyed how Beth explained, again, all the elements of the meal, glancing at Leah to confirm she had things right. The pack was obviously very fond of Beth, encouraging her excitement and enjoying her youthful energy. She was surprisingly innocent, Leah thought. She thought it might be nice if Kara and Beth met. Kara was harder, of course. Her background had made her so and now she was being raised in the Marrok’s pack but they felt emotionally of an age. Leah had often thought how nice it would be if Kara had someone to talk to of her own age. 

She whispered this to Bran as they changed for bed. “Maybe we could do some kind of exchange program,” she said quietly, flicking out her braid from where it had caught under her T-shirt and then tightening the ribbon of her pajama shorts. 

“I think they might resent their only female leaving,” Bran pointed out, sliding under the freshly washed comforter.

“Yes, I suppose.” Werewolf packs were funny about women. They were almost as cherished as submissives and the rare gems that were Omegas. A female Omega like Anna was about as precious a werewolf that you could get. “But it would only be temporary. Maybe Kara could come here?”

Bran gave her an inscrutable look. “Perhaps after we’ve discovered who is killing our people?”

“Yes, yes, that.” She climbed into bed and cuddled into his side, since he had draped his arm over her pillow expectantly. Apparently Bryn’s tactility continued into the bedroom. She decided she was going to enjoy it whilst it lasted. She really only liked being touched by a handful of people and he most of all.

Bran turned off the light and then brought her closer to him so they could presumably talk more easily. “I had an odd day.”

“Mmm-hmm, I thought you did.”

“They took me to where they found Greg’s body.”

“Sawmill Creek,” she prompted.

“Yes. It’s a couple of hours drive away…” He blew out a breath, ruffling her hair. “There’s a disturbing energy about the place.”

“Magical?” Leah draped her leg across his and, thoughtfully, ran her hand over Bran’s taut abdomen, thinking that she hadn’t really been able to express her appreciation for the moment when he’d undressed in front of her on the front porch. She lightly ran her nails over the bumps of his muscles, trailing the tip of her finger over the scars she knew like the back of her own hand. Goosebumps broke out over his arms.

“In a sense. There have been deaths, there. A lot of them.”

Leah hummed. Both Bran and Charles had additional senses when it came to such things so she would have to take his word for it. She had no doubt that if she went, all she would see was a body of water. “Beth said it was treacherous. I think she implied quite a few humans died every year.”

“So I was told. I’ve asked Charles to dig up some information for us.”

She nodded. It wasn’t like they could do it themselves. “Why did they take you?”

“I think they were trying to reassure me. I’d expressed concerns about the deaths of their people.” Bran laced his fingers with hers, probably more to stop her from teasing him than anything else. “You had a nice day.”

“I did, actually.” She winced. It seemed unfair that he hadn’t. “Why were you so muddy?”

“Casper challenged me. Nothing serious,” he added.

“Who won?” In any other circumstance, she would have naturally assumed he did.

Bran sighed. “I made sure it was a tie. And Arnold decided we would be too late home if we continued until there was a winner.”

Her lips twitched. “Are you bothered?”

Her mate, the Marrok of the werewolves of North America, shuddered and gave her a rare sign that he was as driven by the wolf’s instincts as the rest of them were, “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

No doubt his wolf wanted to pound Casper into the ground to prove Bran’s dominance.

Next door, Casper himself cleared his throat and Leah sighed. “We are going to have to come up with a way to talk properly,” she whispered.

“I have an idea about that.” He tilted his head, pressed his nose against her forehead and hummed thoughtfully. “I suppose the rule still stands?”

She didn’t have to think about what ‘rule’ he was referring to. She hesitated before answering because, for her it, it still stood. But he had been through senseless displays of dominance today and his wolf would be restless. “It… does. Though if it’s any help I know where the key to the garage is kept,” she said, smiling.

Bran huffed out a breath of laughter. “Good to know.” He kissed her, lingeringly, letting go of her hand to run it up under her T-shirt, cupping her bare breast gently. “There are other, quieter, things we could do.”

At his words, the liquid heat of her arousal unfolded and she sighed into his mouth. “I know but I’d just want—” Him, she thought. More. She always did.

Her mate made a small, satisfyingly needy noise – uncommon for him – and their kiss became more urgent. “What about the floor,” he suggested, pressing her into the mattress, hands roving over her, trailing pleasure in their wake. As if to emphasize his point, the bed creaked ominously as Leah arched herself reflexively up against him.

Later, she would probably be embarrassed by how quickly she agreed, her principles going out of the window in the face of lust. They clambered down onto the floor, Leah whispering, “You’ll have to cover my mouth,” which made Bran’s eyes spark with heat.

Mortifyingly, Leah hadn’t really appreciated quite how loud she could be until she was really trying to be quiet and even Bran’s hand, dutifully pressed across her mouth, didn’t entirely muffle the sounds she made. She wasn’t the only one.

If anyone had ever had the gall to ask, she would have said that Bran was an exceptionally silent lover, never taking into account the sighs he made as he moved within her or the sharp intakes of breath. In the listening silence – for that was what it felt like – he might as well have been shouting.

At one point in the proceedings, Bran shoved hard with his hand against the dresser to get better purchase and moved it about a foot across the floor – a noise that surely woke the entire house if they hadn’t almost certainly all been awake already. Leah snorted with embarrassed laughter, which made Bran laugh, which made her laugh harder and it took them a while to get themselves under control.

 _Then_ there was the natural sound of two bodies coming together, skin against skin, which seemed to echo in their room, quiet as a thunderstorm. When they both finally reached completion, mouths pressed tightly together, they were wrapped around each other as if to contain themselves.

It was, no question, very enjoyable – the element of secrecy adding a little _je ne sais quois_ to an act they had done countless times – but she felt as if she hadn’t truly been in the moment, worrying as she was about what their housemates could hear.

Bran, slumped heavily on top of her, had no such worries of course. “I don’t want to fall asleep on the floor, Bran,” she told him sternly, as if she wasn’t enjoying the weight of his body, the feeling of his skin.

He made a noise that might have been affirmation. She patted his back, as fond as she had ever been of him, her great, all-powerful husband who couldn’t form sentences after sex. She imagined his wolf, curled up inside of him, restless no more. 

Her words finally penetrated his brain a minute or so later. Bran made the same noise again and then effortlessly heaved himself up, braced on his hands above her.

“Thank you,” he said, kissing her. He often said this, a note of appreciation for her help in controlling his beast.

“You’re really _very_ welcome.” Leah stretched languorously, arching her back and enjoying the post-coital stretching of her muscles.

Above her, Bran watched with interest, head tilted to the side like the curious wolf he could be. “Maybe we could stay down here a little longer,” he suggested, lowering himself back on top of her.

*

Leah opened one eye when Bran got up the next morning, watched him dress, no intention of emerging from her cocoon any time soon. He arched an eyebrow. “Not willing to do the walk of shame with me?”

She snorted. “I’m just _tired_ ,” she claimed, embracing the bald lie. “Besides, I know how werewolf men are. You’ll get a slap on the back and some form of comment on your prowess. They’ll probably give you a nickname. It’ll be revolting.”

Bran dropped down on the edge of the bed abruptly. His shoulders were shaking, chin tucked into his chest as he grinned. “You, meanwhile, just did your duty, I suppose?”

That was _partially_ true, she supposed. But she knew he didn’t really mean that. Leah batted her eyelashes at him. “Later I’m going to darn some slippers for you.”

He barked out a laugh, then. “You do darn _beautifully_.”

“I had to. You used to go through socks quicker than chicken on a June bug.”

“Quicker than…” Bran’s face wrinkled with amusement. He leaned down, kissed her, squeezing his arms underneath her so he could pull her half off the bed. It was unaccountably cozy and she wished she could pull him back down into bed, that they could laze about together, that this was the sort of thing that they did. “What does Beth have in store for you?”

“Nothing. She’s working today. At her real job. So I’m going to go to Batiste’s and tackle the front yard.”

“Ah. Now that I know you’ll enjoy.”

Leah would. She did, in fact. She put her new headphones in and listened to the playlist Beth had put on the previous day, and weeded like it was going out of fashion, tossing the weeds onto a tarp she’d found in the garage. It was a big job, not something she was going to be able to clear in one day, so she focused on the main bed at the front of the house because that would look the most impressive. She wasn’t even going to think about the land behind the house.

Next, she took out a few dead plants, piling them up on the tarp as well. If they weren’t going to maintain it properly, the yard needed some more low-maintenance shrubs, Leah decided. Topiary, perhaps. Maybe some lavender for some color in the Spring. Though she personally thought they were quite tacky, hydrangeas were good for showy appeal and just required watering which, given the climate, would be appropriate.

Leah was trimming the edges of the grass when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She spun around, wielding the shears like a weapon with one hand, the other pulling her headphones out by the cord.

Batiste held his hands up, eyebrows raised. “I tried calling your name, Leah Cornick, but you were oblivious,” he said, tapping his ear.

“Sorry, I was— oh,” she said, realizing he had used her real name.

The Alpha’s expression was knowing “Yes. I’m glad to finally get you alone. I think we should talk, don’t you?”

*

“We’ve met before.”

Leah blinked at him, one hand wrapped around the glass of water he had passed to her. “We have?”

“I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You came to my pack in New York once. My then-Alpha had been overtly killing humans and it was making the papers. I believe your husband sent you to rid us of him.”

She blinked. New York. Her first thought was that there wasn’t a pack in New York City. Then her face cleared. “Oh. The Catskills. That was a _very_ long time ago,” she said. In the last few decades, most of Bran’s ‘dirty work’ had been done by others. Charles, of course. And the damnable and damned Fiona. Before that, however, Leah had often carried out some executions for him. She enjoyed it. It was, she admitted, perhaps why he didn’t send her out any more. There was a fine line with older werewolves and her mental state was something Bran was keen to keep as robust as possible. 

Batiste nodded, pulling out the chair at the kitchen table and sitting. “I was recently Changed. A few months.”

“I’m afraid I really don’t remember you.”

“No, it was a long time ago. You weren’t formally introduced to everyone in the pack. Naturally,” Batiste added, drily. “And you didn’t go by Leah Cornick, then.”

She inclined her head. “No, we weren’t actually married.” Putting aside that their relationship had been more about the mating bargain, back then a single woman had more autonomy than a married one. Leah had held property in her name, had her own money, inherited from her parents. It made more financial sense that she retain her single status and her independence, even if it was superficial. It had only been later that it became more useful that they marry in the human sense. She had taken Bran’s name after that. Before that, no one in Aspen Creek had cared that they were technically ‘living in sin’.

“I take it you’re here because of the deaths?”

Leah nodded. “The Marrok was confused as to why you didn’t think it necessary to bring it to his attention.”

Batiste pressed his lips together. He was a handsome man – with a narrow head, topped with wheat-colored hair and grey eyes - but his features fell into a naturally quite serious form. Dour, some people might have said. “I was hoping to have a better picture of the situation before I came to him.”

“It’s been months,” she pointed out.

“Actually,” he sighed, “it’s been decades.”

Leah blinked. “Decades?”

“Come, let me take you to my war room,” he said, standing.

Batiste’s war room was his office, which Leah had cleaned with much the same way she had tackled his bedroom – taking photographs of the mess and then going at it with every product under the sun. Unlike Bran’s office, which was lined with books, Batiste had maps. Lots and lots of maps, including a huge framed one above his fireplace of America in some part of the 1700s. Leah was no historian and it had been before her time. To her surprise, he picked this map off the wall and flipped it, revealing a pinboard on the back covered in paper. He rested this on the lip of the mantelpiece.

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh,” he agreed, sadly.

Sighing, she pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. “I need to call the Marrok.”

*

Bran had made it clear that he wasn’t able to speak privately so she sent him a message with the salient details instead. He replied with, of all things, _We’re going out for dinner for our anniversary tonight. Smart casual._

“Something wrong?” Batiste asked.

“Um.” Leah wasn’t sure. Had Bran been kidnapped? Possessed? All things were possible in modern America. “He can’t talk.”

“Arnold and Casper have my trust.”

“I’m sure,” Leah said. Until recently, she would have said it was impossible for members of a pack to hide things from their Alpha but their experience with Sage had refuted that. She smiled confidently. “May I take a photograph?”

He waved at the detailed timeline on his wall. “Feel free.”

She took several photographs, really quite impressed with the level of quality of her new cell phone. It allowed her to zoom in on the notes that Batiste had handwritten around each missing person and still maintain the clarity. “Do they know? About me and Bran?”

“No. I decided it would be wiser to speak to you first. Just in case you were here for another reason.”

Leah put her phone back in her pocket. “I know it was unorthodox. Bran was concerned that you hadn’t spoken to him. Charles called you, as well.”

“Yes. I know.” He exhaled and sat on the edge of his desk, clasping his hands together. “At the time I hadn’t realized the extent of the problem. It was mere accident that I found out about Angela. I’m not often in touch with other packs. We live a quiet life here. I don’t attend the assemblies, with the Marrok’s permission, I might add.”

She inclined her head slightly. Many Alphas didn’t. Bran didn’t force his autocracy down their throats – if they wanted to spend time with him and their peers, wanted to speak to him in a public forum, they could. Equally they could just pick up the phone, now that they had one. “How did you find out about Angela?” she prompted, going to look at the timeline.

According to this, Angela had ‘left’ his pack in the early 2000s. There was a photograph of a pretty woman, clearly cut out of a wider photograph, smiling at the camera and wearing a beret over wildly curling brown hair. She had lightly tanned skin, so was probably of mixed ethnicity.

“Ah, yes.” Batiste gestured around the room. “As you can probably guess, I trained as a cartographer but have now specialized in historical maps, predominantly sourcing them as collectors items for clients. I work with a number of museums and libraries and have built up a private network of collectors and so on, not surprisingly amongst our own, long-lived kind. Anyway, the trail of locating one particular map for a client led me to speak to a werewolf who was in Angela’s pack in South Dakota. Or what I thought was Angela’s pack. He revealed that he had never heard of her. I’ll admit, I had thought it odd at the time that she had never called or written once she had relocated. Perhaps… hurt,” he admitted, as if he – a big strong werewolf man – was uncomfortable with the idea. “I got the number of his Alpha and rang the man. He was extremely unpleasant.”

“Stein-Douglas,” Leah added, more than familiar. He was a pain in the neck. If she had been Angela, she would never have moved packs to live under him. _He_ was a man who loved to shove autocracy down his people’s throats. Sometimes more than that, if they were female, she thought darkly.

“Yes. He grew very angry, claiming that Angela had emailed to say she had changed her mind about relocating short notice. It was the first I’d heard of it.”

She re-read the words underneath Angela’s picture. Apparently she had been living with Arnold and he had simply walked past her bedroom in the morning and found all her things gone. “Didn’t it strike you as odd that she had left in the middle of the night? Leaving no word?” 

“We had already performed the ceremony to break her bonds to the pack. She had said she couldn’t bear to do the final goodbyes face to face. I’m afraid I put it down to feminine sensibility.”

Leah’s eyebrows could not have lifted any higher. Batiste did look suitably embarrassed. “Yes. I appreciate that was simplistic. I was perhaps grateful that we had avoided a scene. She’d been with us a long time and we were attached to her. I,” he amended. “I had grown attached. It was... not comfortable.”

“And she was female, too,” Leah added wryly. “I understand that can be particularly difficult.” 

Batiste exhaled. “Yes. Something like giving a daughter away in marriage. You never really want to let go. Severing the ties had been… heartbreaking.”

Leah had to wonder if her own first Alpha had thought the same about her. She had spent little time with the man. The females in her first pack had been very much under the domain of his wife and mate, a human woman who had treated them half like savages and half like pets. She’d died, of course, bearing the Alpha his final child and then the pack had really gone to hell. Nothing was as unstable as a bereaved Alpha. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why werewolf men fell for humans. Was the appeal their fragility?

“So, then, I started to think about one or two others who had left.” Batiste stood and came to look at the timeline with her, pointing to two earlier names. One had a picture, one had a sketch. “Sven, in the 80s. I’m afraid I don’t have a photo of him. Now, I’ll admit I never really knew him well, he’d been a lone wolf a long time and didn’t talk much about his past, but he was stable and loyal, I thought. But then just walked out one day and never came back. I assumed he’d gone lone wolf again, to be honest. After a few weeks, his pack bond dissolved itself. And this is April. _Her_ disappearance I reported to the human police because I felt an intense moment of panic through the bonds. I thought she’d been kidnapped.”

April was a rounded-cheek, youthful looking Asian girl with short black hair. “Why?”

“She was frequently mistaken for a child. At the time there had been a dreadful spate of kidnappings in the late 80s. Human girls. You might recall it? It made the National news. And I wondered if she had been taken by accident. She was a fierce fighter, however, and it seemed unlikely he would have survived her.” He shrugged and then the corner of his mouth lifted. “Indeed, the kidnapper was found a few weeks later, his intestines freshly ripped out, so I did hope that perhaps April had done it and taken the opportunity to skip town and avoid punishment. The Marrok isn’t keen on such public werewolf retribution, I believe, and there was a great deal of attention on the area for some time afterwards. The police claimed it was an animal attack.” 

Leah had little to say to that. She did vaguely recall something about kidnappings around the time Batiste described. And it must have been very big news if she recalled even the slightest detail about it. Regardless, had Bran got involved, he would probably have felt a kidnapper of little girls deserved everything he got and April’s punishment for revealing herself and then killing a human would have been mild. Still, she filed that detail away to give to Charles.

She studied the board a little more. She supposed, given how spaced out the ‘disappearances’ were, it might be possible to think they weren’t connected. Why, in their pack alone they were lucky if a year or two didn’t pass without a death.

But their pack wasn’t a standard one. Packs like Batiste’s, small and supposedly untroublesome, in a territory with no Seethe or fae activity, _could_ rub along quite happily without any incidents. The two females were very suspect. Females were _rare_ and to ‘go missing’ was pretty unheard of. She would need to ask Charles to see what he could find about the police report into April’s disappearance. Just in case. 

The front door of the house opened. “Hello?” a familiar voice called.

“Beth,” Batiste said, standing quickly. He looked panicked. “She sometimes comes by to make lunch.”

Bemused at this reaction but presuming it was because they were in the ‘war room’, Leah said, “Okay. Well, go outside and say hello, then. I just came inside for a glass of water.” So saying, she picked up the glass on the side table that she had been given.

Batiste huffed a laugh. “Yes, of course. I don’t know why— hello,” he called, stepping out of his office and standing in the hall. “Ah, Beth, there you are. I mentioned to Leanne that you might be by.”

“Oh, I wondered where Leanne was. Arnold said she would be working in the yard today and I didn’t see her.”

Leah leaned out of his office, holding her glass of water. “Hi,” she said, smiling.

At the sight of her, Beth’s troubled face cleared. She held up a brown bag. “I brought lunch. There should be enough for three, I think.”

“You’re so thoughtful,” Batiste sighed. Weirdly, it sounded like a lie.

*

“Huh.”

“What?”

“It actually _is_ our anniversary.”

Bran’s head jerked towards her. “You’re joking.”

She smiled, equally surprised as he. “It is. It’s May 12th. That’s when we got married.”

The version in the Church, rather than the version during the full moon ceremony, several decades before. One had come with paperwork and a gold ring, the other with a mating bond and the taste of Bran’s flesh.

The look Bran gave her was as close to fond as he ever got. “How _do_ you remember these things?”

Leah was the one who was good at dates. She always remembered the few members of the pack that celebrated birthdays or anniversaries and made sure to remind him. As a consequence, they probably all thought Bran was just incredibly thoughtful.

“It was my mother’s birthday, as well. It’s just one of those dates,” she said, giving him a reason for her remembering that was at least partially true. They didn’t note their wedding anniversary and Leah was not sentimental about it. For one, when they had married, anniversaries were really only celebrated on more significant milestones – such as the twenty-fifth or the fiftieth year. For another… well. Their marriage was probably not something either of them felt was particularly worth commemorating.

“I didn’t know that.”

“She’d passed by the time we met, of course. And was long gone by the time I stood in a church with you.”

Leah looked out of the window. She had been annoyed by the wedding, which had been arranged rather short notice to allow for Bran’s two-month trip to Europe to deal with Chastel’s increasingly public depravities. She’d had neither time to plan something more appropriate for the Marrok and his mate and also had felt keenly the upcoming sadness of her mate being away for a prolonged period of time. Tag had given her away as Devon had already started to become a little strange by then. There had obviously been nothing particular memorable about the day. It had been disappointing.

Of course, she had already fallen in love with him by then, too. Another disappointment.

The neon sign for the steakhouse appeared in the distance and Bran turned off as indicated. The parking lot was busy for a Tuesday night which suggested it was popular, just as they had been told. She hopped out of the car and adjusted the mid-length blue-satin skirt she had worn for this ‘occasion’ given it was the only thing in her wardrobe that could be classified as ‘smart casual’. Back at home, Leah wore dresses for two occasions – holidays and funerals. And sometimes it was the same dress. She had bought the skirt on a whim and packed it last minute – just in case.

Oddly, as they walked through the parking lot to the entrance, Leah felt what could only be described as nerves manifest in her stomach. She and Bran didn’t _go out_. Yes, they regularly ate together, they lived with one another after all, but a dinner out was purposeful. It was a socially acceptable way to deliberately spend quality time together. Even though she knew this was just an excuse to discuss the revelations of the day, it still felt perilously new to Leah.

Bran gave their ‘name’ to the hostess, who beamed at them. “If you’ll follow me,” she said.

The steakhouse was, to Leah’s mind, reasonably traditional. Dark paneled wood, plenty of animal trophies on the walls. She could see through to the kitchen, smell meat being flame-cooked. Her mouth watered.

“Tony will be your waiter this evening and he’ll be right over to take your drinks,” the overly smiley hostess said, once Leah and Bran were seated.

Leah took the cloth napkin from the table and draped it over her lap, looking around some more. Before she could make a comment, a young man arrived and gave them a similar beaming up-and-down look that the hostess had. Of course, Leah realized with dawning awareness. They looked like a young couple. She’d forgotten this was the usual reaction humans had to them. It was the sort of expression she found herself pulling when Kara did or said something ineffably youthful. It was an ‘aren’t you both adorable?’ look - as if she and Bran were out on their first date together, not a married couple of longstanding.

Leah tried not to sigh.

“Hi, I’m Tony, and I’ll be your waiter this evening. Have you been to Dawseys before?”

They both shook their heads and pretended to be raptly interested as Tony delivered the spiel he no doubt repeated several times a week. Leah then let Bran engage him in a little chit-chat, surprised when he mentioned it was their anniversary, though he obviously adapted the length of their marriage accordingly. 

“One whole year! Well, thank you for celebrating with us.” Tony swept them a mischievous look. He had a very elastic face – transforming what might be considered to be a very average appearance into something more charismatic. “Hmm, let’s see if I can rummage up a little treat for you. Are you ready to order drinks in the meantime?”

Leah ordered a cocktail – mostly because it had a Maraschino cherry in it - and Bran ordered an IPA. When Tony left, Leah leaned forward, eyebrows high. “A beer?”

Bran pulled a face and lifted the menu as if it was a classic novel he was very intent on reading. “I’ve heard it’s something a twenty-four-year-old would order.”

Leah laughed. Experimentation had taught them that Bran could ‘pass’ for twenty-four. With facial hair, he could push for late twenties but he didn’t like having a beard. “I guess I’m grateful he didn’t ask for ID.”

“Charles assures me if he had done, ours would stand up to interrogation. At least by Tony,” he added.

They took their time, lightly discussing the menu – agreeing on their starters, then sides they would order to ‘bolster’ the main steak meal into something more suitable for werewolf appetites. She suggested the buttered spring greens and peas for him, he suggested the creamed leeks for her. Two portions of fries, of course. There was a Caesar salad, too, and some corn with chili. They debated over adding the mac and cheese. Leah wondered if Tony would be the type of waiter to suggest they were over-ordering or if he would let it go in the hopes of a larger tip. She supposed they would see.

Tony duly returned with Leah’s cocktail and Bran’s IPA, presenting both to them with a little flourish and saying they were on the house. This meant they had to be grateful and enthusiastic for this celebration of their anniversary, which Leah left to Bran, who was better at pretending such things.

When they placed their order, Tony frowned at his little pad. “That’s quite a lot for two people,” he said slowly, as if he was afraid of offending them.

Leah smiled. “We’re _very_ hungry.”

“If you’re sure.” His face cleared. “Well, anything you don’t finish you can take home and have tomorrow. Leftovers are sometimes even better, aren’t they?”

“Just so,” Bran replied, as if leftovers were ever part of their lives.

Tony left, taking their menus with him. “Nice boy,” Leah murmured, sipping her tart cocktail. She would leave the cherry until last.

Bran tapped his fingers on the table. “Very. So, we met in 1823. Which means, actually, it’s nearly our two-century anniversary.” He took a sip of his IPA and made a considering face, then took another sip. He obviously didn’t hate it.

“Who would have thought?” Leah mused.

“I didn’t." Bran gave her a whimsical smile. “I thought I’d be long dead.”

She exhaled a laugh, hard, over her cocktail, sending ripples over the foamy top layer. “If I’d had any forethought at all back then, so would’ve I.” But, alas, younger Leah had never really planned further ahead than the next day. The cause of many of her troubles. She couldn’t _precisely_ claim she was much better now.

Wanting to savor it, Leah put down her cocktail and took a sip of her water. “Would you like to see the photo of Batiste’s timeline first?”

Bran did. She handed over her phone and he flicked through the photographs, zooming in and out by pinching his fingers. “I’m afraid I didn’t take you into account when I considered who might recognize us,” he murmured as he studied them. “I did know that he was from the New York pack but I didn’t put together the dates appropriately.”

“You are hardly going to remember every job I’ve done for you.”

“I should.” Bran sounded disappointed in himself. “At the very least out of respect for what you have done on my instruction. You, and Charles, are not a weapon I fire casually.”

Leah thought, perhaps, that this attitude was a new one. It had certainly felt as if he had deployed her without much thought before - _Here, Leah, go kill_. The idea that Bran was changing was a strange one. She had thought him immovable.

Their starters arrived, interrupting any response Leah might have had. Probably for the best, she decided, as she spread her potted shrimps on crusty sourdough and took her first bite. It was delicious. Buttery, well seasoned. She almost moaned at the first mouthful. “Oh, this is good. Do you want to try?”

Bran nodded and they exchanged bites of each other’s food. Not one to shy away from double helpings of beef, Bran had a Carpaccio with a lovely lemon vinaigrette and shavings of parmesan. The combination melted on her tongue. She did moan, then, and he smiled in a way that she was suddenly transported to the floor of their temporary bedroom.

Leah cleared her throat and picked up her cocktail for another sip. “Did you pick things up with Casper?” If he had done, it hadn’t been somewhere muddy.

He grimaced. “We were at the firing range all afternoon.”

This was entertaining. Bran wasn’t one to use a gun out of choice. “What, whoever hits the most bull’s-eyes is more dominant?”

“It seems to be more a question of accomplishments. But it was certainly overly competitive. Tomorrow we’re going hunting.”

She shook her head. “You get taken to a firing range. I’m expected to produce meals on demand. I really never thought that _our_ pack would be more forward-thinking.” Naturally, given the heightened roles instincts played in werewolf lives, they were a few decades behind human sexual equality in some senses but at the very least she would have expected a cursory interest in her ability to, say, physically defend the pack.

Bran agreed, picking up a piece of bread to mop up the juices on his plate. “Yes, little do they realize that you are the weapons expert in our marriage and would be woefully under-utilized in the kitchen. Do you want wine with your steak?”

She nodded and Bran caught the eye of a waiter – not Tony – and ordered a glass of Malbec for them each. Leah finished her cocktail.

“I’ve sent the timeline to Charles and asked him to look into a few more details that Batiste gave me.” Leah explained about April, and the kidnapped children. “He seems pretty convinced they’re connected. All the disappearances. Do you know any of these missing wolves?” If he had done, he would have been able to contact them. One of his ‘talents’.

Bran’s answer was interrupted by Tony, who arrived to take away their plates. He accepted their effusive praise as if it was his due, almost blushing. “I’m so glad you guys are having a good time. Are you from around here?”

“No, we’re just visiting friends in the area,” Bran said, as if Tony wasn’t remotely interrupting a conversation about a potential werewolf serial killer. “They recommended this as the place to go for a special occasion.”

Leah pressed her water glass to her lips to hide her smirk. _Special occasion_. Good Lord.

“Well I’m super glad they did. Make sure you save room for dessert,” Tony advised, reaching for Leah’s cocktail glass.

“Oh, wait,” Leah said, pouncing to grab the cherry. “That’s my favorite part.” She popped it into her mouth, the fake sweetness saturated with alcohol bursting on her tongue. She chewed happily.

Tony winked at her. “We have a cherry pie on the specials board, just so you know.”

Leah would, without question, be ordering it. “Yum.”

They had another five minutes before their mains arrived, Bran managing to clarify that he hadn’t known any of the missing members of the Foxton pack and so, no, he couldn’t contact them. “We’ll need to get full profiles of all of them so we can speak to their previous Alphas. Or more probably you because I’ll be out hunting. Or wrestling. Or maybe,” he blew out a breath, “hot wiring a car.”

“I know how to do that, too,” Leah said, as she was presented with her sirloin. She nearly clapped her hands she was so happy. “I love steak.”

*

Bran sighed soulfully when he climbed into bed with her that evening. Leah was still full. The mac and cheese had, even for them, been a step too far and then she had topped this off with a slice of cherry pie. “I wouldn’t be a very active participant tonight anyway,” she told him.

“You say that like I’d mind.” Leah raised her eyebrows, conveying her thoughts on this, and Bran smirked to confirm the lie. “Yes, you’re right. I’d mind.”

Turning off the lights, they lay facing each other in bed, listening to the sounds of the occupants of the house settling. Arnold had been the only one up, cleaning his guns at the dining room table and listening to music quietly. He had smiled at them in much the same way Tony had when he had wished them a final happy anniversary, as if he thought they were adorable and hoped they made it to year two.

Leah had never felt quite so _married_ before. It was odd.

“Did everyone hear?” she asked, remembering her expectations that morning. “Did they tease you?”

Bran smiled broadly. That was a yes. “It was certainly novel.” No, there wasn’t much opportunity for others to tease the Marrok, Leah thought. “No nickname, though.” 

“Shame.”

“Why does it bother you so much?” he wanted to know, sounding genuinely curious.

She shrugged. “It’s private.”

Her mate frowned. “We’re not always private at home.”

Leah parted her mouth to say that it was different, that everyone knew her at home, that she didn’t _care_ and then she realized it wasn’t remotely true. When they were at home, she did care. “I don’t have something to prove here,” she said, eventually.

Bran took a moment. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

She scrunched up her face, rubbed it against the pillow. It was starting to feel embarrassing, like she’d opened herself up to a revelation she didn’t particularly like about herself. The more she thought about it, the more a prickling sense of _wrongness_ made itself known. She wished he’d not asked. “It does to me,” she said quietly.

In Aspen Creek, most of the werewolves knew that Leah’s marriage to Bran was more about the mating than the marriage. That he didn’t love her had become public knowledge so quickly after he had brought her home, spread – no doubt – by the ever-ready tongue of Samuel. It then seemed to be information that was handed to each new resident like a participation award. _Welcome to Aspen Creek. By the way, the Marrok doesn’t love his wife. Make of this what you will_. 

At home, she always felt like she was putting on a show to make up for this. Eking out what she could from her relationship with Bran, her role as his mate, proving over and over again to the members of their pack that she was Bran’s partner in almost all senses, even though he poured his love into seemingly anyone other than her. Obviously, sex was part of that - a reinforcement of their mating. In the of simplest terms, it said _We are together_ in all the ways that the words and emotions that were lacking between them didn’t. She didn’t care who heard them, who even saw them, because it was a point of pride for her. Her body was the only one their precious Marrok could enjoy.

Here, in this pack, in this room, it didn’t feel like she needed that. It actually felt a little bit like she might really be Leanne. That her marriage was young and fresh and hopeful. That it was the one thing about which she had nothing to prove. ‘Bryn’ put his hand on her back and made her an omelet in the morning. They slept in the same bed and went out for their anniversary. He got ‘jealous’ over Casper and replied promptly to her text messages. When they made love – which they would do, still discovering each other’s bodies – they would do so just for them.

 _Oof_ , she thought. Now she’d made herself sad, which she tried not to do, as it was a pointless feeling.

Leah rolled onto her back so she didn’t have to look at him watching her invasively. He couldn’t read her mind – she was ninety-nine-percent certain - but sometimes it looked like he was really trying. It was better that he didn’t succeed because her thoughts were often ugly. Perhaps it was better that the mating bond hadn’t worked for them. Perhaps that was _why_.

“You’re spiraling,” Bran murmured, sounding resigned. He put his arm about her waist and pulled her against him, a solid presence at her back. “Stop thinking whatever it is you’re thinking.”

Leah pressed down on her bottom lip with her teeth, _hard_.

Her mate made a kind of rumbling noise, sort of stern and affectionate at the same time. “You honestly cannot understand the attitude I will get if they find out I’ve reduced you to tears, Leah, really. Casper will probably challenge me for your hand. I’m quite convinced Arnold thinks you’re some kind of angelic form made werewolf. It’s really deeply unsettling.”

She laughed a little and clenched her hands around his. He was being kind. He did try, in his own way, not to hurt her. “That _is_ unsettling.”

“Two hundred years,” he said to the back of her head, “we should do something to celebrate that. When we get home. A gathering of sorts.”

Leah thought of how it would look and swallowed her immediate, first ugly instinct that everyone would know what a farce it was. So what? Two hundred years _was_ something to celebrate, regardless of what the pack would say about it. “That would be nice,” she said quietly. Then she winced; it sounded like a lie.

Bran sighed. He squeezed her tight. “Or we could do something together, just the two of us.”

She nodded, unwilling to test out verbalizing her agreement, in case it too sounded like a lie.

*

In the morning, Leah was embarrassed by what was, for her, tantamount to an emotional outburst and she blustered her way through getting ready, announcing she would go downstairs and cook breakfast for everyone before Bran could even say anything.

She whisked up pancakes, very quickly, and crisped up some bacon, piling everything into warmed serving dishes on the dining table so people could help themselves. She got what Bran meant when Arnold turned shining eyes on her, as if she had presented him with something significantly more valuable than fried food.

“Lay the table,” she said, embarrassed, handing him plates.

He did so without hesitation – never mind that he was the Second in the pack and she was whatever ‘Bryn’ nebulously currently was - and then she wordlessly handed Casper glasses with the expectation that he would also obey her. To her satisfaction, he did. Fergus pulled the gallon of orange juice from the refrigerator and grabbed a roll of kitchen towel. “You get my vote,” he said with a cheeky smile.

For a brief moment, she felt sorry that there would be no ‘vote’.

Her mate was last to the table and was rather muted, certainly in comparison to the theatrics of Casper, who ebulliently wanted to go through everything they had eaten at Dawseys and followed each dish up with a question on whether or not Leah could make it. Each time she said yes, he moaned in a purposefully sexual way which was annoying Bran, she could tell, even if no one else could. It certainly annoyed her.

“I think they made the mac and cheese with truffle. A little expensive for you rabble,” she commented, tartly, cutting her pancake up into neat mouthfuls.

“Rabble,” Fergus snorted, crunching on his bacon. “Accurate.”

This got him a playful shove from Casper on his right. Fergus grinned happily.

Arnold cleared his throat. “What about the potted shrimp? I’m not sure I know what that is. It’s basically butter and shrimp?”

“Clarified, spiced butter, yes. It’s a British dish, I think.” She had made it, once or twice, from a recipe book she had got from a thrift store. It was the type of thing she liked to experiment with.

“I’d eat that,” Casper agreed, sucking on his fork in what she presumed he thought was a provocative manner, “if you made it.”

Leah rolled her eyes. She passed Bran some bacon. He was frowning. “What will you be doing today?” she asked, searching for a topic to involve him that might move the conversation away from her capabilities in the kitchen.

“Hunting,” Bran said shortly. “I told you last night.”

He was annoyed. He only corrected her in front of others when he was annoyed. “Oh yes, I forgot, I’m sorry,” Leah said, easily. She turned her brightest smile on the other men at the table. “You know, I’m a very good hunter.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it for a second,” Arnold said, waving his fork around in an unconcerned way. 

“Could I have more bacon, please?” Fergus asked, holding out his plate. 

Casper took a large gulp of his orange juice. “What about peppercorn sauce? Can you make that?”

“Here,” she said, passing the dish with the bacon down the table. “And yes, Casper, a peppercorn sauce is very easy to make, I can show you. You can impress the next woman you plan to seduce.”

This was, apparently, very amusing and thankfully led to a fairly ribald series of comments on Casper’s prowess or lack-there-of with the ladies which occupied them for the rest of the meal. Under the table, Bran put his hand on her leg, curling his fingers under her knee. 

*

With Bran otherwise occupied, Leah had the tedious responsibility of spending the day on the phone with Charles going through the material he had gathered. Batiste had given her his office for the day and as a paranoid precaution she had swept it for any listening devices. The quiet Alpha was not quite on her ‘innocent’ list.

“I found April,” Charles began, after they had exchanged brisk greetings. “Batiste was right. I’ll forward you a copy of the police report - cause of death was classified ‘animal attack’. They found a mattress covered in dog hair and based on this assumed an animal turned on its master. The detective at the time was certain he was the kidnapper, in any case. But they found restraints in the house, some toys, but no DNA evidence that specifically tied him to the missing children. April herself is in Idaho, and is calling herself May,” Leah snorted, “and admitted the whole sorry story down the phone to Anna. She _was_ taken but she wasn’t the only one he was holding at the time – there was another girl there that April decided she couldn’t leave behind if she escaped herself. In order to get the girl out, April Changed, was seen by the kidnapper, who shot her. The little girl got free, however April was then trapped and found herself in the unique position of having revealed herself to a very dangerous human predator.”

“Hmm,” Leah said. “I guess, long story short, she killed her kidnapper when she escaped?”

“Correct. Rather than coming forward, she decided the best idea would be to run away and hide in case his death could somehow be traced back to her. Anna didn’t feel April was the smartest cookie, by the way.”

No kidding. “Who took her in?” An unknown lone female was suspicious. _Most_ Alphas would declare her to Bran. There were only a handful— _Idaho._ “Oh, don’t tell me. It was Digby.”

Charles sighed, all the information that she needed to confirm she had been correct. “She says he was the Alpha who Changed her so there was a prior claim. It didn’t sound like a lie and I imagine with some digging I could find that out. She’s young enough to be on the List.”

The ‘List’ being a database that Charles had started to keep in the 1950s, noting successful Changes outside of Aspen Creek.

Leah rolled her eyes. “That’s neither here nor there. _Fine_.” She would leave Bran and Charles to deal with that. “I’m sure Batiste will be relieved she is alive.” 

“Now, I can’t find hide nor hair of Angela. I circulated her picture and no one has come forward as either remembering her or having seen her. I spoke to Stein-Douglas who was, as ever, a delight, and he is forwarding me their correspondence to review but taking his own sweet time about it.”

Her lip curled, the dislike of Stein-Douglas overcoming her surprise at finding yet another subject on which she and Charles apparently agreed. From the little they had discussed of it, Leah knew _Bran_ thought Stein-Douglas was simply ‘old fashioned’ by which he meant ‘old and unable to change’. He sometimes erroneously, in her opinion, applied this to Leah. 

Standing in front of the timeline, one hand propped on her hip, Leah looked at the sketch of ‘Sven Nilsson’. Contrary to his Northern European name, Batiste’s sketch had dark hair and dark eyes, he had even lightly penciled-in a tan skin-tone, as if he was from southern Europe originally or South America. Maybe the Middle East like Asil.

“Sven’s name sounds familiar to me,” she said. But she had met many, many wolves in her time – both here in the United States, as well as in South America when she was younger and in the occasional trips she had made to Europe. Nilsson was a popular surname. 

“So, I know what pack he came from originally before he became a lone wolf. The problem is that pack is no longer. You might know more – Anderson?”

“Morales?” she asked. It was a name she hadn’t said, or thought of, for a very long time.

“Yes.”

“Oh, he’s long dead,” she murmured. Charles was right. He would have been a teenager when Anderson Morales had died. “Your father killed him. He refused to cede to Bran’s authority. He… wasn’t a bad man.”

Charles was silent. “What do you mean by that?”

Leah found herself lowering her voice, as if admitting something she shouldn’t. “What I said. I think your da regretted his death for a long time.” She remembered well how quiet Bran was afterwards. In the weeks that followed, she would often find him staring off into the distance, lost in his own thoughts. It was the first time she had thought that perhaps Bran wasn’t as cold-hearted as he had led her to believe. He did feel guilt. Sadness. Pain and regret. 

She saw that in him less these days, though. Perhaps because he had allowed Charles to take that burden on for him. Perhaps because he had become used to making those hard decisions now.

Clearing her throat, Leah remembered she had a job to do, not to simply wander down memory lane. “There will be a few from that pack still around. Barnabas, for one, is in Cincinnati. _He_ has an extraordinary memory.”

“I’ll try him, then.” Charles sounded as if he was smiling. She supposed for them this had been an exceptionally tolerable conversation. “Da messaged me to say he was concerned he might lose _you_ to Batiste’s pack. Apparently you’ve won them all over.”

Leah wouldn’t have thought Bran would have much to say about her to Charles, so she was surprised. She was also surprised that Charles would bring it up in an almost conversational way. This was not how she and he usually interacted. “In some senses, they have been surprisingly pleasant,” was all she could manage on the subject. Then, helpless in the face of her own ego, “Is that exactly what he said?”

“Word for word.”

She smiled and then shook her head at herself, unbelievably finding herself distracted once more. She cleared her throat. “Is there anything else you have for me?”

“Not at the moment. When I have the information from Stein-Douglas, I’ll send it through. You received all the articles about Sawmill Creek yesterday?”

Grimacing, Leah said that she had. It honestly appeared as if the creek was a death trap – in the last few years there had been many ‘accidental’ deaths, usually of teenagers, and several suicides. “I wonder what it is about the place that makes it so dangerous.”

“Well, the articles seemed to suggest it was combination of environmental factors but it could certainly be something Other. Fae, perhaps.”

Leah would have thought Bran would have noticed if it had been fae. She wanted to go and look for herself, now. Perhaps she could convince Beth to take her around. Though what possible excuse she could have for that was beyond her.

After hanging up on Charles, she combed through the police report he had sent through and the newspaper articles he had forwarded about the kidnappings – including the ‘mysterious’ re-appearance of the little girl who had escaped. According to the articles, she had no memory of her escape, being only six, and Leah imagined no one was keen to _make_ her remember. She would be in her fifties now. Maybe even still living in the area. If nothing else, Leah wondered if she might be worth tracking down, see what she remembered – grotesque as that thought might be. She had seen a werewolf Change, after all.

Since she thought best when her hands were working, Leah used Batiste’s well-stocked kitchen to prepare a spicy, slow-cooked shredded chicken recipe that she had adapted for more sensitive taste-buds. She’d have some for lunch herself and knew it froze well so made a double batch. 

She had a more solid timeline of events now, padding out Batiste’s with a few additional pieces of background information about the pack and some of its personalities. She needed to refresh her memory of what she knew about Greg and Kirk, as well as the current members of the pack. Most had been with Batiste since he had formed it, some even Changed by him. There would be little she could find out about them that talking to them herself wouldn’t achieve. She would ring Corbyn herself and ask a few questions about Fergus. Given he was the most recent addition to the pack, she thought it unlikely he was involved but there was always the possibility the disappearances of Sven and Angela were unrelated.

That brought her neatly to Sven. If Sven had been part of Anderson’s pack then he was Leah’s age, or had been, and it was therefore possible she had met him before. She resolved to follow-up on that, get a better picture of him. Barnabas might be able to shed some light on him, though it would be out of date information. 

In the afternoon, she put a call into Corbyn who was – in the words of the wolf who answered – ‘out on his boat’ by which she assumed he meant one of his yachts. She had been on one the last time she had visited, as it had been the backdrop to his wedding reception. She left a message, requesting a call back and was gratified that the message taker sounded suitably terrified to hear it was Leah Cornick who was calling. “Yes, ma’am, as soon as he’s back, I’ll make sure he calls you. I’m sorry he was unavailable. He doesn’t like to take his cell—”

Leah was well used to the whims of older werewolves who thought ‘technology’ interfered with their lives rather than made it more convenient. “That’s fine. Unless you can help me. How long have you been in his pack?”

“Two years, ma’am.”

Too recent. And, besides, Corbyn would be annoyed if she interrogated one of his people without his say so. She said her goodbyes and hung up.

She was shredding chicken when her phone beeped with incoming emails from Charles. They were all forwarded from Stein-Douglas. She set the chicken aside, put the remainder of the sauce on the stove to reduce, and scrolled through the various emails that had been exchanged between Angela and the man she thought would make her a good Alpha. She frowned in concentration. They were pretty mundane. Stein-Douglas came off almost normal in them, which was a surprise. A puzzle for another time.

She read and re-read the final email from Angela. Then dialed Charles. “I don’t think the last email was written by her.”

“Agreed,” Charles grunted. She wondered then where he was. Was he in Bran’s office? Bran had strongly suggested Charles and Anna make use of their house whilst they were away but Leah knew they were both troubled by how full the main house was all the time. It was something they would have to get used to if they ever had their own pack. 

Leah switched back to the email app, looked at the short message ‘Angela’ had sent to Stein-Douglas. She supposed she could see that a hot-headed Alpha might not notice the dissimilarities in tone and, frankly, spelling. In that Angela had terrible spelling and whomever had written this was very precise.

“Can you do anything? Trace back the email or, I don’t know, some other kind of technical wizardry?” Leah had little understanding of Charles’s capabilities. Only that he was _clever_ as well as unusually magical, which was Bran’s favorite combination. Leah had never been able to compete with either of those things. 

Charles exhaled a quiet laugh. “Not from an email sent fifteen years ago. I’ve pinged Angela’s email account; it’s no longer in use.”

Tedious. She had become used to Charles’s ability to find _anything_ using his technological prowess.

Her phone made the incoming call alert and she checked the screen. “Charles, I have to go – Corbyn’s calling.”

*

Bran sent her a brusque message at five saying they wouldn’t be back until late so when Batiste returned, and asked if she wanted to stay for dinner, she said yes. It ended up just being the two of them so she served up the chicken she had made, with rice, corn and store-bought guacamole. Leah couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten a meal alone with a man other than her husband and, as often she verbalized thoughts she oughtn’t, she said as much.

Batiste smiled and toasted her with his glass of wine. “I’m honored, then.”

She was pleasantly embarrassed. “Well, there’s no need for that.”

He was a nice conversationalist, actually. She shared what she had learnt so far that day – edging around the parts where she had been investigating his current pack and leaving out the detail about April, thinking she would need to tell him in front of Bran – and he absorbed it all, politely. He asked to see the last email that Angela had sent but otherwise said he thought she had it well in hand. Leah expected he meant _Bran_ had it well in hand but managed to hold that comment back. 

“I’ve an unrelated question, actually. Purely personal interest.”

Batiste nodded and scraped the last of the guacamole onto his plate after offering it to Leah, who declined. “Go on.”

“The tests that your people are putting Bran though – is that normal? You seem to have spent very little time with us. I would have expected the Alpha would be putting any potential new pack-mates through their paces.”

“Fair question. And, actually, we have changed things around a bit, relatively recently. Arnold proposed a few amendments – in the first week, he and Casper get a good feel for the individual by working with them. Then, based on their feedback, I would then spend more time with you in the second week, focusing on the areas that they might feel are weakest or are of concern. Whilst I would be looking to see if you would be a complimentary fit to the pack, _they_ would actually have to work with you on a day-to-day basis and it’s felt that this might be more beneficial in the long run.”

She thought that sounded reasonable.

“Though, I do admit that the tests they have put _you_ through have been a little different.”

“Oh?”

“On reflection, I suspect it’s because you are married. If you’d been single, perhaps you would have suffered the same fate as the Marrok.” He winced. “I apologize for that. No doubt you would have appreciated a little more activity. I’ve heard you’re quite the marksman, as well.”

Leah smiled widely. “How nice that information has travelled.”

Batiste cleared the table and then returned with small glasses of port. “I’m old fashioned and it’s nice to finish off a delicious meal with a _digestif_ ,” he said.

Uncomfortably aware that her husband was probably, right now, skinning his own dinner, Leah took a sip. “Very civilized.”

*

Leah drove back after nine to find the house was disappointingly still empty. In a long-ingrained habit, she pottered around the downstairs, putting things back where they belonged, carrying shoes to the shoe-rack by the door, hanging up items of clothing left about the place.

Then she watched a few minutes of television but couldn’t settle. Nothing felt right and she couldn’t get comfortable. Belatedly, she realized with the house empty she could take a long shower without worrying she was delaying someone, so she veritably ran upstairs, just in case she would miss her chance.

Leah grabbed her toiletries bag and the towels that they had draped over the hook on the back of the door. She would deep condition her hair – a ritual she did one a week at home – and scrub every inch of her body. She wished she’d thought of this before; she could have taken a bath. Read a magazine.

She was midway through scrubbing her legs in the shower, one of those over-the-bath-tub kinds, when a whoosh of cold air startled her into yelping. Had she not locked the door of the bathroom? She looked behind her, expecting to see Bran, for who else would walk into the bathroom when it was obvious there was someone inside?

Only it was not Bran. It was Casper, wearing an enormous, pleased-with-himself smile.

Much like he had done when she was _fully_ clothed, Casper looked her up and down, this time taking his sweet time of it.

“Are you _quite_ finished?” Leah asked haughtily, whipping the towel off the rail when she had finally unfrozen from shock. 

He gave her an utterly insouciant grin, all teeth and glittering eyes. He clearly thought he was charming. “I thought you were done.”

“So you just walked straight in?” She wrapped the towel around her, tucked a knot between her breasts. “I’m not done. _Get out._ ” Leah pulled back just in time to stop herself from using Bran’s clout to add emphasis to an order. Pulling an Alpha-voice on him would really give the game away.

He swept her a bow, unrepentant. _Ugh._ The scenario was hideously not unfamiliar to her – she had spent years in her first pack as an unmated female. Unwanted attention was something she had once borne with very little tolerance - only now of course she would jeopardize the investigation if she truly repudiated him the way she would have wished to. She would just have to imagine shoving her toothbrush somewhere intimate instead. Or through his eyeball. Up his nostril? Hmm.

Casper left, closing the door behind him. This time Leah climbed out of the tub to brush her teeth and threw the lock on the inside of the bathroom door as she did so, not something she felt adult werewolves needed to do. She wished she’d packed a robe or something but it had never occurred to her that she might need to share a bathroom.

When she was finished, she put away her toiletries into the little bag and unlocked the door, quickly ascertaining that the hallway was clear. Leah walked back to their room with a scowl on her face and her chin held high. She closed the door behind her and exhaled.

Bran, now home, looked up from the magazine he was reading. “Am I right in thinking that Casper walked in on you in the shower?” he asked casually.

Leah’s scowl increased. Obviously her yelp had been audible to most of the house. “Deliberately,” she said, annoyed. She started to dry herself briskly. Whilst she was by no means shy – few werewolves were – there was a difference between nudity that was permitted and what was clearly private.

Bran put down the magazine with a bored sigh. “I suppose that is something that cannot be borne. Excuse me,” he said, getting up.

She didn’t ask where he was going. She didn’t need to. A minute later, Leah heard the door of the room beside them open and then there was a loud, body-sized thump, followed by a sudden shift in furniture, followed by two more thumps and the sound of something heavy falling over. She pulled a T-shirt on and started to comb out her hair.

Bran returned a few minutes later, not looking noticeably disheveled. He jumped back onto the bed, picked up the magazine. If she hadn’t known him that well, she wouldn’t have caught it, but his eyes were glittering with an unusually fierce light. 

“Are you actually angry or is this more acting?” she whispered. If the latter she was impressed. If the former… well, she didn’t know what to think about that. She didn’t need someone to defend her and yet it was also oddly gratifying. It felt similar to when he took one of his sons to task for being disrespectful to her. 

Bran glanced up. Her question was answered. Bran didn’t need to act when they were alone. He was genuinely furious.

“Oh,” she said. She tied off her hair, thoughtfully. Bran was not a fan of violence, particularly unnecessary violence, and would normally consider retribution over a female – namely her - to be beneath him. If it was just ‘Bryn’, why was he so mad? 

Hmm.

Not sure what to make of it, but nevertheless _liking_ it, Leah crawled into bed, tucking the comforter around herself. Bran was watching her over the edge of the magazine he was no longer pretending to read. He had become a little wolfier than he normally allowed himself to be. She supposed that meant the situation had alerted his monster and she knew it was her job to help him with that.

Leah stroked her hand across the comforter, feeling uncomfortable, prickling with awareness. Next door, she could hear Casper moving around slowly, righting his room.

Bran broached the topic she was avoiding thinking about. “I think _Bryn_ would be compelled to a possessive display, regardless of who could hear it. And Leanne would be receptive.”

Vaguely, Leah waved to the floor, feeling her cheeks heating. “Of course. At least—”

“ _No_ , Leah.”

“Fine,” she said. She _wasn’t_ a prude. She _enjoyed_ sex. She would just… not care who knew it. And she was not a little turned on by his beating on Casper for walking in on her in the shower. 

Leah turned to kiss him, making the first move herself, to take back that moment of power and to show him that she wanted him. His lashes fluttered and he kissed her back, mouth and tongue firm, pushing up against her and crumpling the magazine between them. 

She pulled back a little to look at him. Up close, Bran had four freckles on his nose that only she probably knew about. She saw the shimmer of his wolf glance across his eyes. Yes, Casper had incensed more than the man. He was lucky that Bran had such good control.

Impatiently, Bran tossed the magazine on the floor and cupped her face with his hands. He kissed her, hard, his mouth opening hers wide. He tasted of wood-smoke and beer. He rolled her onto her back, and then held her gaze, momentarily, his eyes still glittering. “ _Leanne_ is going to be loud,” he told her.

She would see about that. “Oh, is she.”

Her husband nipped her bottom lip. “I’ll make sure of it.”

*

Leah came downstairs last, sneaking quietly, hoping to find the breakfast table empty. Their opposing mindsets being what they had been, the previous night had turned into something of a battle, with Leah doing her very best to be quiet and Bran doing everything in his not inconsiderable power to ensure she communicate his proficiency as a lover. Naturally, it wasn’t going to be the kind of battle where one side came out as a definite loser but Bran – after a great deal of effort _–_ did eventually get his way 

She hadn’t been particularly looking forward to facing their current housemates. Apparently Bran could ensure she was _very_ loud, indeed.

Thankfully, it was only Fergus who was sitting at the breakfast table, eating cereal from a mixing bowl. He smirked knowingly at her. “Good _morning_.”

Leah pressed her lips together in a facsimile of a smile. She was the Marrok’s wife and she would _not_ give a damn. And if she did, she could fake it that she didn’t. She’d spent decades practicing that. “Morning.”

Leah poured herself a more modest bowl of cereal and took a seat opposite Fergus, attempting to strike an air of insouciance. Thankfully, after eating quietly for a minute or so, she tilted her head to the side, distracted. “What’s that noise?”

“Arnold is punishing Casper.”

Listening a little more, she tried to identify what she could hear. Clanking? Grunting? “How?” she asked, eventually.

“He’s bench-pressing the tank.”

“The tank?”

Sighing, Fergus dropped his spoon into his bowl with a clatter and stood up. “Come on.”

He walked her out the back door into the overgrown back yard. It was edged with rampantly flourishing bushes and trees that meant the space – about a fifth of her yard at home – wasn’t remotely overlooked, even though they were in a semi-suburban area. She wasn’t surprised she’d missed the tank. It was half covered in ivy, set amidst some tall grasses and ferns, and she had simply mistaken it for a bush.

Casper was currently occupied by lifting this behemoth at one end, observed by Arnold and Bran and a scowling Beth. Leah was becoming increasingly convinced that Casper was the one she had been referring to as ‘ungentlemanly’.

Leah stood next to her husband. “It’s a Vickers 6-ton,” Bran said, as if this meant anything to her. He was, she had to say, looking very relaxed and cheerful this morning. It seemed to be very easy for him to put his arm around her and give her a big, uncomplicated and genuine smile.

“Why do you have a tank?” Leah asked, in general, as Casper grunted and swore underneath it.

“We think it came with the house,” Fergus replied, crouching down. “How many does he have left?”

“Ten more,” Arnold said. His arms were crossed but his body was tensed, as if ready to spring into action if it looked like Casper might be failing.

“Fucking fuck fuck fuck!” Casper yelled, as he pushed up the tank. His arms were shaking and his T-shirt was drenched with sweat.

“This is such a good idea,” Bran whispered to her and she knew _exactly_ what he was thinking.

Leah leaned into him and gave him what she hoped anyone looking would think was an affectionate smile. “You cannot have one,” she said through her teeth. Where was he thinking they would put it? In her beautifully landscaped yard? Absolutely not.

Casper swore through ten more, his whole body shaking and sweating profusely, getting slower and slower with each repetition. On their right, Beth was whispering a countdown and when she reached ‘ten’, all three men stepped forward and grabbed hold of the tank. Rather than crawl out, Casper lay, panting with exhaustion, and Beth took hold of his ankles and dragged him from underneath.

“Thanks, Bethy,” he breathed. He rolled his head to the side as the men put the tank down gently. “I apologize, Leanne.”

Leah had been raised to forgive when an apology was offered. Sometimes she even meant it. “You’re forgiven. Don’t do it again,” she added. Behind him, Bran was pulling the ivy from the tank to get a better look at it. Clearly he had lost interest in Casper’s invasion of her privacy. Likely he’d lost interest long before the introduction of the tank, having dealt with the situation in the manner he saw fit.

Arnold clapped his hands together. “Excellent. I’ve got to do some work today. Bryn, Leanne, Batiste has asked that you shadow him.”

“Oh,” Beth said. She looked from Arnold to Leah with obvious disappointment. “I was going to take Leanne around town.”

Arnold was sympathetic but unmoved. “I’m sorry, Beth, the Alpha has other plans for them today.”

Beth pouted, looking for all the world like a child who’d had her favorite toy taken away.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Leah said consolingly. It struck her that perhaps Beth was a little lonely. She knew what that felt like. “Perhaps we could go somewhere nice for lunch?”

This seemed to appease her. “That’s what I thought,” she said. She shook her plaits over her shoulders, lifting her chin. “I’ve just the place, too.”

Arnold patted Beth on the shoulder. “There we are, that’s settled.”

*

It took Leah some time to pry her husband away from the tank and even then she suffered through a long, thoughtful exposition on just how a British-made tank from the 1930s might have ended up in a North American back-yard and then some involved description of the evolution of said tank. She thought how unfair it was that she wasn’t allowed to discuss pack gossip with him because it bored him to tears and yet _this_ was somehow more acceptable.

She was glad she wasn’t driving, otherwise she might have deliberately crashed the truck into a tree to make it end. If it wasn’t for the fact that sometimes Bran’s historical expositions were quite interesting, she would put a blanket ban on them herself. See how he liked that.

It wasn’t until they got to Batiste’s and she caught the look of devilry in her husband’s eyes that she realized he had been doing it on purpose.

Despite her outrage, Leah found herself laughing. “You bastard,” she said.

She got a pinch in the side for swearing but then he leaned over to kiss her. “The expression of exquisitely polite pain on your face was too enjoyable.” His shoulders shook and he kissed her again.

Leah really wasn’t used to these public displays of affection – who was he acting them out for now? – and didn’t know what to do with them. She smacked his chest. “Get off me,” she complained, mock-crossly, flinging open her door. “I shall have my revenge, Bran Cornick.”

Bran was still chuckling as they let themselves in the house. Batiste came out of his office and smiled reflexively at their good humor. “Bran Cornick, welcome to the Foxton Lake pack,” he said formally, lowering his head.

Her husband gave Batiste his most deceptively innocent and light-hearted smile, the young man he had one been shining through his face. “It’s good to meet face to face, despite the circumstances.”

Batiste made them all coffees and then Leah took a seat in his office whilst he repeated much of the information he had given her the other day. She and Bran had not had a chance to ‘debrief’ one another the night before and Leah hadn’t pushed it as she and Batiste had planned for this change in plans so that the three of them could spend the day together.

And, she had thought, give Bran a break from being someone else.

She sipped patiently, waiting to give her own updates, casting a disparaging look at the clutter that had manifested since she had last cleaned. There was a dirty plate underneath a pile of newspapers and the remains of a sandwich and, oh, a banana peel. Of course.

To distract herself from this, she daydreamed a little, looking at her husband as he paid respectful attention to one of his Alphas. He gave off an air of relaxed confidence, hands loosely clasped between his knees as he nodded at Batiste’s explanations. Love swelled within her, as it did at the most unexpected moments. Before Bran, she’d thought herself in love once or twice, both as a human and as a werewolf, but there really was no comparison. Perhaps it was simply a reflection of who he was. He was a Power in the world, a man who was capable of great and terrible things. It almost made sense to her that she – a woman who had put herself first all her life, who could admit to being wholly selfish – now found herself laying her heart at the feet of such a man.

“Leah?” that man said, drawing her out of her reverie. His expression was tender. A ‘Bryn’ expression. “You spoke to Charles yesterday?”

She put down her coffee and broke the news about April first. As if to further cement her opinion of him, Batiste’s initial response was relief. “She’s alive. Thank God, thank God for that,” he said, leaning back against his desk. He then justifiably became angrier. “Why didn’t she come to me? At the very least a phone call… I searched for her. I worried about her. We all did. I filed a _police report_.”

Leah knew, because Charles had found out, that the local police had barely bothered to look into April’s disappearance, being far too stretched looking for the missing children than for a missing adult.

“It is curious behavior,” Bran agreed equably. “I would like to speak to her myself. Perhaps face to face.”

“She’s in Idaho,” Leah said mildly, anticipating a reaction.

Her husband immediately rolled his eyes. “ _Digby_.” He picked up his coffee, took a big gulp. “Charles can go, then.”

“ _Charles_ can’t go. There’s no one else at home.” She had a thought. A mischievous one. “You could send Asil.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Batiste’s eyes widen at the name. The Moor was well known, even in America. Yes, they had some scary werewolves in their pack.

“I could,” Bran said slowly, mulling the thought over. “I don’t think Asil has had the pleasure.”

Leah enjoyed this prospect. Asil would loathe Digby. “You would have to forbid Asil from killing him.” And maybe Asil wouldn’t be able to help himself. And Bran would have to punish him.

Bran gave her a quelling look, as if he knew well where her thoughts had gone. “I’ll think about it.”

Batiste cleared his throat. “I, too, would like to speak to April.”

Her mate inclined his head. “That can be arranged.”

Leah stood, drawing their attention. She took her cell from her pocket and handed it to Bran. “Charles forwarded me the correspondence between Stein-Douglas and Angela. It’s of both our opinion that the last email Angela sent isn’t actually from her.”

“I agree,” Batiste added.

Leah waited a moment for Bran to skim through the emails in question, which he did so quickly. He nodded. “The time stamp is also unusual. 3.14am. Everything else was sent during normal working hours.”

Batiste pulled off the cap of a Sharpie and went to write the detail on the timeline. Leah found herself smiling; he was a dear man. She was sure he could be brutal – all dominant werewolf men were – but he had some mannerisms that she found terribly charming. She wished he came to the assemblies. She would enjoy his company.

“The other person we’ve been looking into is Sven. Charles has been trying to get in touch with Barnabas, who was part of Andersons’s pack with him.” She didn’t look at Bran as she said this but she needn’t have worried. Bran was a professional. Or perhaps he had just forgotten Anderson. There had been many deaths since him.

“Trying?” he queried.

She finished her coffee. “The Cincinnati pack is on some kind of annual retreat.”

“How delightful,” Bran murmured drily. “And they cannot be reached?”

“Two words. Digital. Detox.”

Both Bran and Batiste looked equally confused, as well they might. Leah had to ask Charles what it meant. “I… can imagine what that means. I suppose we will wait,” Bran said equably, though he could have easily contacted Barnabas himself. It wasn’t a power he liked to display, however, outside of a well-trusted circle.

Batiste glanced at his watch. “Unfortunately, I have a call in fifteen minutes that I was unable to reschedule. It shouldn’t take more than an hour, if you wouldn’t mind stepping out?”

“No problem. Leah and I will take a walk around.”

*

They wandered down to the small lake that Batiste had on his property and after which his pack was named. Much like everything else, it was in need of some care and attention and Bran stood on the small jetty, looking at it disapprovingly. “Duckweed,” he muttered, as if this might have meaning to her.

She made a noise of encouragement. She had chosen to remain on the bank as she didn’t trust the stability of the wooden planks that her mate was standing on.

Bran crouched and reached down into the water, running his fingers over the green plant-life that entirely covered the surface of the lake. “I liked our dinner the other night.”

This was an unexpected conversational topic. “Me too. We don’t usually do that sort of thing.”

He flicked the duckweed from his fingers and then wiped his hand on his jeans. “No. But maybe we should.”

A flush of warmth suffused her. “I’d like that.” It was an understatement. She struggled to contain the cascade of wistful thoughts as experience had taught her not to hope for too much as life often got in the way. But now she knew he had enjoyed it, Leah could at least _suggest_ it as a possibility. He had given her permission enough for that.

Bran changed the subject again. “What do you think of Batiste?”

Leah was unequivocal in her response. “I like him.”

“High praise from you.” Bran walked back to her, sidestepping the rotten planks. Today, he was wearing the T-shirt she had worn to clean the house. She’d laundered it, of course. It was green which had the converse affect of making his hazel eyes look darker. It was also a little tighter than the T-shirts he usually wore and it emphasized the definition of his shoulders and upper arms.

“I like people,” Leah said.

His expression told her his doubts regarding that but he made no comment. She felt moved to defend herself regardless. “I like people plenty. Our pack is just full of your misfits who don’t belong anywhere. It’s perfectly reasonable that I find some of them challenging.”

Bran smiled and held up his hands. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” Leah muttered, annoyed. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, as if he knew something she didn’t. She tossed her head and looked to the side, across the bulrushes around the edge of the water. “What do _you_ think of him?”

He gestured to a reasonably new looking bench at the side of the lake, sending her in that direction. “I like him, too. I had hoped I would.”

“And the others?” She sat beside him and stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankle. 

“Enthusiasm for your assets aside, Casper is… fine,” Bran said, just the barest hint of resentment in his voice as he said this. Leah smirked. “Arnold hasn’t given me a concern one way or another. And I’ve spent little time with the others. What about you?”

“Same. I’ve spent the most time with Beth.” Leah hesitated to give her husband any more ammunition to tease her by making a comment about finding Beth fairly charming. “She’s… very young.”

“Yes, I noticed that,” her husband said thoughtfully. He stretched his arm across the back of the bench, behind her back. “Young in body as well as spirit. I understand from Arnold that she lives out of town in her mother’s house.”

Leah nodded but wasn’t sure how that was relevant. It did add to her earlier thoughts that Beth might be lonely. “I spoke to Corbyn. He said he was sad to see Fergus go. Said he’d been a solid member of their pack.”

“Did he say why he left?”

She nodded. “Though I think we both know that Corbyn has quite a high turnover because of the climate, he actually said it was because of a woman. Fergus had been seeing someone in the pack and it ended badly and Corbyn had to make a choice between the woman and Fergus. In the end, he asked Fergus if he would be interested in transferring. He spoke to Batiste himself first. Smoothed the way.”

Bran grimaced as she told her tale. It wasn’t an uncommon story. Having women balanced out a pack and given a choice between the two, it wasn’t surprising Corbyn had wanted to keep the female.

“However, I’m pretty sure the ‘woman’ is Cordelia,” Leah added, a detail she had been intending to keep to herself because Bran might classify it as ‘gossip’, which he loathed.

To the surprise of everyone, Corbyn had married the previous year. Leah had gone to the wedding without Bran, who had been travelling. It was curious how Leah’s husband always seemed to be ‘travelling’ when his Alphas married and thus this tedious task usually fell to her.

With the exception of the wedding of Adam Hauptman and Mercedes Thompson, of course. Bran always made sure he was available for her.

“Corbyn’s mate? He told you this?”

“No – he just avoided mentioning the woman’s name and was very shifty. I could call her and ask if you think it’s relevant.” Cordelia had been tolerable enough for Leah to take her cell phone details.

He grunted. “Your ability to detect gossip is really on another level. No, I don’t think it’s relevant. Fergus is reasonably new – he can certainly have nothing to do with the earlier disappearances. If they are indeed disappearances. And I can’t help but feel murdering two established members of the pack would be out of character.”

Leah agreed. “Batiste told me everyone had alibis anyway. Fergus was at the hospital.”

“We should get him to write them all down, see if we need to check them out ourselves. Not that I don’t trust Batiste’s opinion but there is such a thing as blissful ignorance.”

She agreed and then, as an hour had passed, they returned to the house.

*

After protesting mightily, but falling into line under Bran’s mild glare, Batiste reluctantly gave out the alibis of his people for both Greg’s and Kirk’s approximate time of death. Most were at work but notably two, the same two, didn’t have alibis that could be checked by people outside of the pack. Rolf, who had been providing childcare on both days and Arnold who had been ‘with a woman’ whilst Greg was disappearing beneath the water and then ‘with a different’ woman when Kirk was being decapitated.

“Two _different_ women that he didn’t disclose to you?” Leah asked, blinking. 

Batiste frowned. “I asked him if he had anything to do with the murders and he said ‘no’. It wasn’t a lie.”

As Arnold’s Alpha, Batiste was in the best place to know. Very, _very_ few people could lie directly to their Alphas and it was usually a skillset an older werewolf would have.

“You have no idea who these women are?”

Batiste cleared his throat. “I… do not.”

Bran was trying not to smile. “But you have some idea.”

“I really, really would rather not say.”

“Why?”

He sighed. He was embarrassed. “I believe they’re married. It’s not my place to judge.”

But clearly he did.

“What, is Arnold some kind of gigolo?” Leah asked, simultaneously outraged and also intrigued. They were presumably married _human_ women.

Bran snorted.

“I really… I try not to get involved.” Batiste covered his face with one hand. “He had a series of bad relationships and, honestly, I don’t fault him looking for something a little less serious. If they’re all… consenting adults… what does it matter?”

All of this sounded as if Batiste was convincing himself. Leah supposed if the situation was reversed – Arnold female and involved with married men – she would have been more appalled. Angry, even, on behalf of the women who were being cheated on. An issue close to her heart. Instead she was oddly more intrigued. “Goodness,” she murmured. It really put a whole, unexpected other light on Arnold.

“A series of bad relationships?” Bran questioned, whilst Leah was adjusting.

Batiste sighed again. “Yes. You— well, I suppose you don’t know how it is,” this he delivered with a small smirk, as if Bran and Leah couldn’t possibly understand what being ‘single’ in modern America was like, “but it’s challenging, keeping a significant part of yourself away from a romantic interest. Women can often tell. It’s a strain.”

Leah was wondering if Arnold was not the only one who ‘knew how it was’. A thought occurred to her, perhaps spurred on by the conversation from the love triangle that was Fergus, Corbyn and Cordelia, perhaps it was her innate ability to find ‘gossip’, as Bran put it. “Was he dating Angela?”

Batiste shook his head. “No.” This was delivered assuredly.

Bran tilted his head, picking up her train of thought. “Were you?”

The Alpha’s pause was revealing. “It had never got that far. With females in your pack, you have to be cautious.” He turned his hands over, palms up. “It can upset the balance.”

“But you would have?” Leah pressed.

Batiste gave her a small, sad smile. “Who knows? Perhaps. As it was, Angela decided she wanted to move to another pack.”

Leah reminded herself that this careful dance between an unmarried Alpha and his females was normal and did not necessarily give Batiste a motive for Angela’s disappearance. “Did she ever tell you why she wanted to move?” Leah wanted to know.

Batiste picked up a pen from his desk and began to fiddle with it. “She said she wanted a change of scenery,” he said quietly.

She recalled that Batiste had admitted to being hurt by Angela’s defection – for that was typically how Alpha’s saw it. Personally hurt. Now that he had revealed that they had been romantically involved, however loosely, that hurt must have cut deeper. And now she saw more easily his unwillingness to follow-up when she had disappeared in the night. Pride, of course.

They had a late lunch, Batiste rather quickly pulling sandwiches and soup together as if he was afraid Leah might think he thought this was her responsibility, and then he excused himself to take another work call. This time, she and Bran lingered in the kitchen, the door half closed. Leah knew her husband was listening with one ear to the conversation Batiste was having in his office, checking it was indeed a work call.

After a moment, Bran seemed satisfied. He stood and went to make coffee. “What do you make of it?”

“I think—” Leah smiled, mischief overtaking her. “I think if I had been shown half the consideration in my first pack that Batiste showed Angela, I might never have left with you.”

Bran gave her a mock-scandalized look. “Leah Cornick, you bite your tongue.”

She laughed and then sighed. It wasn’t really funny. “Being an unmated female in the 1800s was a never-ending assault on one’s virtue. Like Casper but ten times worse.” 

Her husband knew this. “I suspect if he had been less delicate, however, Angela would have stayed.”

“Also true.” Leah reached for a banana in the fruit bowl and began to unpeel it. Bran presented her with her coffee. She thanked him. “I think she was murdered.”

“Based on?”

“Gut feeling.” She ate her banana and Bran sipped his coffee, staring out of the window.

“Hmm,” he said. “Your gut is usually worth listening to.”

*

That night, in bed, Leah sat up against the headboard and looked through the photographs she had taken of Batiste’s bedroom suite. She pulled up the framed picture on his dresser, zoomed in and showed it to Bran.

“This is the photograph where he cropped Angela’s face from for the timeline,” she said, keeping her voice low.

They had a full house tonight – with Casper next door doing what sounded like press-ups, counting as he did so, and Fergus in the living room downstairs watching a medical show that he kept snorting at loudly and periodically shouting ‘Oh come _on!’_.

“Arnold has a copy of this in his room as well,” she continued.

“Ah, well spotted.”

This approbation gave her a familiar warmth of pleasure. It was rare he was pleased with her.

They looked at it together, Bran leaning cozied up against her side. The photograph had been taken on Batiste’s front porch. Most of the faces were familiar as the pack hadn’t changed that much since the photograph was taken. Angela was standing slightly to the front and left of Batiste. Arnold was to his right. April was sitting on the bottom step, big smile, hands wrapped around a ceramic cup. Leah zoomed in on an unfamiliar face. A woman, human, judging by her age and appearance. Someone’s wife? Girlfriend? And an unfamiliar man. “Sven, maybe?” Leah suggested. He did have dark hair and perhaps dark eyes – it was hard to tell.

Bran shook his head. “The clothes don’t match the timeframe.”

Leah reviewed everyone’s clothes, amused at her husband’s ability to notice such details. Fashion changed very quickly for her. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “This is, what, the 1980s?” She supposed the hair was more obviously of that decade. Big, lots of hair spray. Frosted. She remembered that. 

“Check out the shell suit on Arnold,” Bran chuckled, reaching over her hand to zoom in. It was a masterpiece of turquoise.

“Remember when that was all Tag wore?”

He nodded and matched her wicked grin. “Emblazoned on my eyelids.” They enjoyed this activity for a while, scrolling around, making gentle fun of the outfits. “Who took the photograph?” Bran wondered.

“Oh, good question.” Someone from the pack, she guessed. “We should ask.”

“We should,” Bran said. He moved his head slightly and nuzzled her neck. Leah instinctively tilted her head to give him better access. Next door, Casper continued his counting. _Two-hundred-and-five, two-hundred-and-six_. Ignoring this, Bran moved more intently, easing himself over her and pressing her into the pillows.

Leah sighed, fully prepared to give in. “Look, I know you have to do this but could we just agree to be a little more sensitive to our surroundings?” She was half tempted to suggest they go for a drive somewhere. Or the floor again.

Bran held himself still, freezing from his head to his toes. Then, slowly, he lifted his head as if he had scented prey. “What do you mean by ‘have to’?”

“Because of.” Leah tapped his chest and then continued her theme, smiling to show that she was open to it. “Honestly, Bran, it feels as if we’re on display. Or if Casper’s in the room with us. You know he’s just doing that to show-off. It’s… it’s a _little_ hard to relax.”

Strangely, her husband’s alert look intensified. “You think I have to have sex for the monster?”

“Ye-es?” Leah said slowly, not understanding why he was picking up on the least important point she was making. Next door, Casper continued his counting. _Two-hundred-and-twelve, two-hundred-and-thirteen_...

Bran allowed a variety of expressions to cross his face. Confusion, predominantly. Shock. Then worry. “Is it possible, we have had an extremely long-standing miscommunication on this subject?” he said, almost to himself.

Leah abruptly caught up. “I— are you saying that’s _not_ the case?”

Bran cleared his throat. “There’s no question that sex is, ah, the most effective suppressant.”

She nodded. She was right then. “So that’s a ‘yes’.”

Her husband gave her a very pinched look. “He doesn’t need suppressing _all the time_ , Leah.”

“Okay,” she said, now becoming perplexed. She pushed herself a little more upright and he moved with her, propped up on his arm. She supposed she knew that. Otherwise they would be having sex all the time.

Her husband was still studying her face intently. “Do you— did you think that’s the only reason we have sex?” he asked tentatively, as if he didn’t want to hear her answer.

Leah was a little embarrassed now, feeling as if she had somehow made a stupid mistake. And when she was embarrassed she was defensive. “You _told_ me that was why you need to be mated. And sometimes it’s obvious. You come to bed all—” She waved her hands around. “Manic. And then we have sex. And then it’s gone.”

Bran’s eyes were narrowed. “I repeat - you think I _only_ sleep with you for the monster.” 

Leah said nothing. She was capable of doing so when it seemed as if the answer she would give would displease him. Obviously, biology being what it was, she _did_ know that Bran didn’t find her physically repulsive and he did _enjoy_ being with her when he had to be. It was just she had always thought the driving force behind their coupling, at least from his side, was the particular role of their mating bond. So… _yes._ For the monster.

Reading her face, Bran cupped his hand over his mouth for a moment. Then he pulled it away. “All right. I can see how I may have contributed to this perception. Let’s clear this up now. The last two times we have been together _predominantly_ because of the monster were,” he held up one finger, “after Asil’s witch visited Aspen Creek,” he held up a second, “and when I came back from Spokane. And before that, I don’t know, it must have been when we were in France during the last world war and before that… is too long ago to recall.”

She blinked at him. “That’s… not very many times.”

“No,” he said, with fierce emphasis.

Awkwardly, Leah climbed out of bed, wanting to get away from him, unable to think with him so prickling-ly close. She was tempted to pace but the room really wasn’t big enough. “I see,” she said, flicking her hands out at the side, trying to dispel excess energy. “So the other times…”

“Were because I – and I sincerely hope you – wanted to.” Bran sat forward until he was kneeling on the edge of the bed, studying her unnervingly like prey.

“I see,” she said again. She tried pacing a little, just a couple of steps, turn, then another two steps. “So _last night_?”

“Was because I wanted to.” A glint in his eye told her how much he had wanted to. She hurriedly looked away, not quite prepared for that.

“Right.” Leah nodded. This was fine. This was fine, wasn’t it? It was, in fact, _better_. 

“The bond between us is enough, Leah,” Bran said gently, watching her. “It’s always been enough.”

“Yes, I see that now.” The sex, having sex, was for them. Because they enjoyed it. Because _he_ enjoyed it. He wanted her. That was… very far away from her perception of the situation.

She stopped and took a small step to stand in front of him. “You want me.”

Bran held her gaze. “Yes,” he said. Then, with a smirk, he dropped his eyes up and down her. “Very much.”

Leah nodded. _Better_. She pushed her husband and he fell backwards, rising up on his elbows to watch with intense interest as she pulled off her pajamas. She climbed on top of him. Funny, suddenly she didn’t give a damn who heard now.

*

As promised, Beth took Leah on a drive around town which – amusingly – involved Beth reciting interesting historical facts that she had clearly learnt in order to make the tour more interesting.

“The original church burned down in 1905,” she intoned seriously, as she paused outside a traditional looking white church, the kind that looked to Leah like the meeting houses of her childhood but with a steeple. They had a very similar one in Aspen Creek. “So this is just a replica.”

“Uh-huh,” Leah said, smiling faintly. She was enjoying herself.

Leah was shown Main Street, she was driven past a couple of schools, including the one where Beth worked, a picturesque bridge that had been built by a man whose family still lived in the area, an orchard, another church, the front gates to a couple of the bigger farms in the area, and then she was shown where the Walmart was and the Best Buy.

“It’s very pretty,” Leah said, in general. It was. It felt very traditional, small town America. “Where does everyone in the pack live?” Batiste and Arnold’s houses were in a reasonably similar area to the west of what appeared to be the center of town, though Batiste clearly lived in the more upmarket part, right at the edge. Beyond his land lay Taunton Forest and then acres of farmland, some of which was devoted to solar panels, some to livestock. Batiste himself owned several pastures which he rented out to local farmers.

“Oh, I’m miles away. Like, an hour’s drive north,” Beth said casually, pulling into a space on Main Street, where the restaurant they were having lunch at was. “That’s if the traffic is good.”

Leah was surprised. “That far?”

Beth sighed. “Yeah. It’s… I grew up there and when my mom died, it made sense, financially. And it’s home, I guess.”

“Of course. I’d love to visit,” she said, one of those off-the-cuff statements that she said without thinking about and therefore couldn’t get caught out in a lie.

“You should! Maybe you can stay over this week.” Leah was saved from answering because Beth hopped out of her truck, crying out, “Lunchtime!”

The little restaurant was charming, light and airy and decorated in tones of white and pale teal. Beth was obviously well known as she was greeted warmly by the waitress and shown to a small corner booth. “I used to come here with Mom,” she confided in Leah.

“When did your mom pass?” Leah asked, gently.

A shadow of sadness passed across Beth’s face. She looked down at her lap whilst she arranged the snowy white napkin. “Nearly twelve years ago, now.”

That put her mom’s death before Beth had been Changed. Batiste had Changed her, of course. Bran would have given him permission for it – would probably have talked to both Batiste and Beth at length on the telephone if they hadn’t wanted to come to Aspen Creek for the ceremony before the Hunter’s Moon. “I’m sorry,” Leah said, belatedly. She assumed Beth’s mother had been sick.

“Oh, you know. These things hurt less as time go on. Or, you think about them less,” she amended. She gave Leah a bit of a quirky smile. “You know?”

Leah did. She had lost many people in her life. Leanne hadn’t, however, so she had to remember that. “It’s still hard.”

“It is.”

The waitress arrived and handed them both menus. It was a handwritten list of items which, combined with the scents from the kitchen, made Leah’s mouth water. She listened with half an ear to the chit-chat between Beth and the waitress. 

“This is a friend of mine, visiting in town. I’m trying to convince her to move here,” Beth introduced Leah with a disarming smile. “Leanne, this is Naomi. Naomi, this is Leanne.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Leah said, smiling warmly at the woman. She was tall and thin, with smooth, black skin and curling, greying hair tied back with a silk headband. Her lipstick was an eye-catching coral. Leah had never really worked out how to wear lipstick. She seemed to touch her mouth too much.

“Nice to meet you, too, Leanne. Are you staying up at the house with Beth? Seen any ghosts yet?” This was delivered with a twinkle at Beth, who chortled.

“Ghosts?” Leah queried.

“My house is haunted.” There was no hint of a lie when Beth delivered this but she was smiling broadly as if she anticipated Leah’s incredulous reaction.

Since Leah knew for a fact that ghosts were real, she was less amused. She wondered if Beth knew this – many werewolves managed to live quite insular lives, as Leah herself had done before she met Bran – or if this was just one of those long-standing human stories that had become ‘fact’. “How… curious,” she managed, maintaining a lightly curious smile.

Beth ordered without looking at the menu and so Leah asked for the Shepherds' pie and a coke.

“Don’t worry,” Beth confided as Naomi walked away, “the portions are really big here.”

“Do you really have a ghost?”

The young woman giggled. “Well, something keeps opening and closing my cupboard doors.”

That wasn’t a ghost. That was a poltergeist. Even worse.

At Leah’s frown, Beth seemed to gather that something wasn’t quite right. “Ah. I mean – I was joking?” she said. “Or are… are ghosts real?”

Oh dear, Leah thought.

*

Leah returned to the house just before five to find Bran was alone, sitting at the bottom of the stairs, apparently waiting for her. One of the few gifts they shared through the mating bond was the ability to sense where each other was – and the closer they were to each other, the more precise that could be. “Beth has a poltergeist,” she announced in lieu of the traditional greetings.

Her husband nodded, stood and took her hand, and towed her up the stairs. “Unfortunate,” he said.

She followed him up to their room, not particularly satisfied with this response but persevering nonetheless. “She says it doesn’t do much more than open and close cupboards. So I suppose it _could_ be something else.” Bran started to undo his belt and unbutton his jeans. Her brain naturally came to a full-stop. “Why are you undressing?”

Bran gave her an ‘are you stupid’ look as he kicked off his jeans. “There’s no one home. No one. For at least another hour. No one counting their press-ups.” He pulled off his sweater and tossed it into the corner of the room. “No one watching TV. No one coughing _mysteriously_ whenever that headboard hits the wall.”

She was already unbuttoning her shirt. “I missed the coughing.”

He grunted and his underwear went in the same direction as his jeans. “It was suggested today that I should treat the household to pairs of noise-cancelling headphones.” 

Leah bit her lip. She realized that despite being the one most concerned about being overheard, she had not really suffered at all. Bran had born the brunt of it and it was clear even he was tiring. “I’ve comforted myself with the knowledge that when all this is over, Casper might leave the country in fear.”

“I’ve had similar thoughts.” Bran kissed her and undid the button of her jeans. He made a noise similar to the one he made before he was about to eat something he anticipated enjoying. “Just to be clear,” he said as he moved his mouth down her neck, “my wolf is perfectly in control at the moment.”

Later, as she was attempting to address the mess Bran had made of her hair in the spotted mirror above the dresser, her husband returned to the subject of Beth’s ghost with more interest. “It hasn’t done anything violent?”

“She says no.”

“Hmm. Well, it might not be aggressive. Did you tell her not to engage with it?”

Leah nodded. “Though I suspect it might be too late. She says she occasionally talks to it. Like it’s a friend.”

“Oh dear.”

“Do you think we should go and check it out? She’s invited me to come and stay with her anytime I want. I’m sure I could assume you were included in the invitation.”

“Afterwards, I think.” Bran stretched. He’d got as far as putting his boxer-briefs back on but had then decided to lounge about in their rumpled bed. He looked appealingly disheveled.

She sighed, once again wishing they were the type of people who could just lie around in bed together. “Do you know what the evening’s plans are?”

“Yes.” Bran’s eyes sparkled. “We’re going for a _run_.”

“Oh thank God,” Leah said, with real feeling.

“I thought you’d like that.”

*

Batiste’s wolf form was a large, black-with-undertones-of-grey wolf that dwarfed her mate. He was one of those werewolves whose dominance really came to the fore when he was in this form and Leah found herself quite naturally submitting to him. Bran, of course, pretended to do so as easily, as he did with Arnold and Casper. Leah wondered if it was restful being so powerful that dominance meant nothing to you. 

To begin the night, Batiste quite obviously chastised Casper in front of everyone and then they set off through his land, in a north-west direction towards Taunton Forest. It was just about big enough for good a run, nothing like the mountain forests that surrounded Leah’s home but good enough. Certainly for Leah, who had noticed she was starting to get a little itchy in her skin. Unlike Bran, she could go for a good couple of weeks without Changing but the disruption of her routine and unfamiliarity had made her long for her wolf’s pelt. 

Playing the devoted mate, Bran kept close to Leah’s side. He was nimble and a little faster than her in his wolf form and he teased her by gambling ahead and then spinning when she caught up, nudging her, and running off again, as if to say _Hurry up, slow poke_. Leah’s wolf enjoyed this form of flirtation and she put on a spurt of speed, chasing after him and overtaking him. He nipped at her flank, playfully, and then tumbled her into some undergrowth. They rolled around and probably would have continued this had Batiste not barked at them to get moving.

There was little in the way of real prey. Leah caught the occasional whiff of deer and other, smaller animals that wouldn’t be of interest to a wolf of her size. Batiste had warned them off of chasing anything larger than a fox, however, and to keep aware of their surroundings. Not too long ago there had been a ‘wolf’ sighting which had led to a great deal of noise from the local farmers, with concerns about their livestock and fears wolves were trying to recolonize outside of the trophy zone. The pack had been forced to keep to Batiste’s land until the noise had calmed down.

They weren’t out for longer than it took for the pack to chase down two jackrabbits and a raccoon and then spend twenty tentative minutes toying with a porcupine. On the return, Rolf head-butted Fergus into the lake. Being sandy in color, he came out quite visibly green from the duckweed which was – frankly – very funny. Less so when he shook himself out all over everyone. Arnold was forced to intervene after a few minutes of everyone observing Fergus’s attempts to get his revenge on Rolf, when their play fighting became something more involved as their instincts took over. Batiste had already gone inside to Change and by the time the rest of the pack had joined them, he had heated up several dishes of Beth’s famous stew and there were bowls and spoons set out. It was a significantly more casual meal than previous occasions as there wasn’t a table big enough for them all so they sprawled out in the large living area instead.

As she dipped some heavily buttered bread into her stew, Leah privately thought it was a nice change of pace to have an Alpha who prepared meals for his pack afterwards. There was a distinct air of the paternal about it.

Bran jumped over the back of the couch to sit next to her. He looked a little wild as he always did after being in his wolf’s form. When he was relaxed, when he didn’t feel the need to snap back into his human self, it took him longer than her to adjust. Older wolves were like that and her mate was – lest she forget – very, very old.

He smiled sweetly at her and offered her a bottle of water which she accepted gratefully. Changing made her thirsty.

In the kitchen, Rolf and Fergus were still squabbling and Arnold sighed and got up from the armchair he had been ensconced in, mindlessly spooning food into his mouth. Casper dropped down in his place and snuggled in, as if Arnold had left it very warm. He fixed his grey eyes on Bran in a predatory manner, which Leah’s husband ignored easily.

“Where’s Beth this evening?” Leah asked loudly. The stew was good. She wanted to tell her.

“Car wouldn’t start. I sent out Lucius to help,” Batiste said, licking his spoon.

Lucius, one of the men who had interrogated her about her husband on the night of their arrival, was a car mechanic. He was also absent from the run.

This seemed like an apt time to bring up Beth’s spectral guest. “At lunch, she told me she has a ghost in her house.”

There were a variety of snorts and laughs from the pack around her. Apparently this was well known and, if not known, it wasn’t surprising.

“She doesn’t,” Casper grunted, putting his bowl on a side table. “It’s the wind. I’ve been out there when it’s happened.”

Leah noticed that Batiste’s brow quirked when Casper said this – as if he was concerned or puzzled that Casper might have visited Beth’s home – but he didn’t question it.

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Rolf said next, coming out of the kitchen. Fergus and Arnold were still in the kitchen. Leah could hear the low tones of a slightly fraught conversation.

“They are,” Bran murmured, said in such a way that Leah felt the change in belief in the room. She leaned a little towards him, warning him that his power was leaking. He grunted. “I’ve heard.”

The belief ebbed.

“Well, she’s making it up.” Casper was firm and obviously unsympathetic. “She should sell that mausoleum, get herself a new car and move into town.”

“Casper,” Batiste cautioned, a rumble of a threat in his voice. “I won’t have you talking behind her back.”

Casper held up a hand. “I’ve said it to her face.”

“My last warning, Casper.”

His Alpha’s tone collapsed Casper’s boisterous attitude. “Yessir,” he said meekly, bowing his head. “I apologize.”

Arnold emerged from the kitchen, Fergus on his heels. “We should hit the road. Fergus and I have early starts tomorrow morning. Casper, do you want to catch a ride with us?”

“I think that would be wise,” Batiste said, narrowing his eyes at his Third. Casper gave his Alpha a small, apologetic smile.

Leah stood. “We’ll follow you,” she announced, raising her eyebrows at her mate. “I’ll drive.”

Bran gave her that disarmingly sweet smile again. “Sure thing, sweetheart.”

*

Bran fell asleep in the car in the short drive home, Leah casting him several amused looks as he did so. She drove a little slower than she would normally, giving way to a few more cars so that she dropped further behind Arnold. She figured that would at least mean the bathroom would be free by the time they got back.

When she pulled up in front of the house, she checked her phone for a few more minutes, giving Bran some more time before she would be forced to wake him. She checked Kara’s Instagram feed for anything new, pressing the little ‘heart’ button on a view from what Leah knew was Kara’s bedroom window, then she looked at the weather at home. Significantly cooler than here.

“I have a delicate question,” her husband said.

She jolted. “You’re awake.” Bran’s eyes reflected the blue light of her cell phone which dimmed until they were nothing but pools of darkness. “Delicate how?”

“I suppose delicate for me. My masculine sensibility, shall we say.”

Leah raised her eyebrows. “Your masculine sensibility,” she repeated disbelievingly.

“Yes.” His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “I do have some.”

“Oh, no doubt.”

“So, allowing me a moment of masculine sensibility – you haven’t been dutifully submitting yourself to me _because_ of your belief that sex pacifies my monster, have you?”

Knowing Bran as she did, she wasn’t surprised that this topic was rearing its head again so soon. He could be like a dog with a bone. _She_ let things go more easily than her husband did. “Dutifully submitting to you? What, like, lie back and think of England?”

“Yes.”

Leah almost laughed but held herself back because of his _masculine sensibility._ “No, of course not.”

Bran was not immediately convinced. “You never say ‘no’ to me,” he pointed out.

“I said ‘no’ the other night,” she said, as if this was in fact something she did all the time.

“Yes, that’s true.” Bran was clearly thinking about it. Had been thinking about it. Perhaps he had been pretending to sleep. “But you were _anxious_ about it. I could feel how anxious you were. I thought it was because you were just concerned about our intrusive little neighbor. But that wasn’t it, was it?”

She felt a little taste of that anxiety now. “I don’t really remember, Bran.”

“Leah,” he chastised quietly, detecting the lie.

She shook her head and picked up the keys. “This isn’t something you need to worry about. Even if there were times _perhaps_ when I might have preferred not to, being with you isn’t a torment.” Impulsively, Leah leaned over to kiss his cheek. “As you well know.”

Bran leaned forward, caught her hand to hold her in place and touched their foreheads together. “You can say no to me any time you want,” he said.

She pushed against him affectionately, turning her head so she could rub his cheek with hers. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to reject you more frequently. For your masculine sensibility.”

Gratifyingly, Bran growled. Leah laughed and buried her face in his neck. He smelled like his wolf, which she loved. “All right. Let’s get inside before they turn a hose on us or something.” Almost as soon as she finished her sentence, the security lights were turned on, near blinding both of them.

“Holy Mother of—” Naturally Bran didn’t finish this, just winced, shielding his face with his hand, and opened the car door.

Prompted by her own sense of mischief, Leah found her husband’s hand as they walked towards the front door. She bumped shoulders with him. “Let’s shower together. For an obnoxiously long time.”

“That shower is not designed for any such activity, _Leanne,”_ he whispered to her.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something, _Bryn_.”

*

Saturday, apparently, meant they had a day off from trying to impress the pack. Naturally, that meant Bran woke before dawn. She was vaguely aware of him dressing, then he leaned over her. “I need to go back to the creek,” he whispered to her, nudging her towards the edge of the bed.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Leah muttered, very much not up but doing her best. “Can you go and make me something to eat?”

He jumped out of bed, leaving her to potter about and dress quietly in the dark. When she came downstairs, it was to find him waiting with a large thermos of coffee and a paper bag that smelled appetizing. She was shuffled out of the door and into Charles’s truck before she’d even managed a surprised word.

“Why the hurry?” she asked around a mouthful of fluffy eggs and melting cheese. He made a mean omelet. “Mmm, this is good, thank you.”

“I was pretty sure Casper was lying in wait to take you up on your suggestion of hunting prowess.” Bran turned onto the highway, heading north.

Leah grunted. “I might have liked that.”

“ _You_ might have, but there wouldn’t be a chance Bryn would leave you on your own with him and if I have to watch Casper fawn over you for a solid day, I’m not sure I could be held responsible for my actions.”

“I like being fawned over,” she muttered, only half joking. 

“Sweetheart, I _know_.” He patted her leg, which made her smile. Sweetheart indeed.

“I don’t really get it. Why’s he doing it? We’re mated. Even if it’s not for very long, it’s still, you know. Binding. And _rude._ ” Leah unwrapped the second omelet and then hesitated. “Is this for me too?”

“Yes.” Bran glanced at her and then back to the road. “You know a mating can be broken in the first couple of years?”

Leah paused, mouth opened to take a bite. “What?”

Bran glanced over her again, this time he was smiling. “That’s a no, then.”

“You can _break_ a mating?” She had never heard of such a thing. “That’s _awful_.”

Her husband, Marrok of the wolves, shrugged carelessly. “It’s very modern.”

“It’s awful,” she repeated. Cross, Leah ate her omelet. “I can’t believe this is a thing I didn’t know existed. Is it common knowledge?”

“I suppose it is now. But it’s not _traditional_.” Thereby implying Leah, who was very traditional, would not know about it. It wasn’t as if their pack was young or was full of couples, either. The only person who had mated recently was Charles and there wasn’t a chance in hell he would let go of Anna. _He_ was traditional, too. “Nor is it easy, though the principle is based on the bond not being fully formed. These wolves are younger than ours so it might just seem like a readier option.”

“That I’d just toss you aside if I came across something better?”

“Yes,” Bran said drily.

“Unbelievable.”

Leah ate the rest of her omelet in silence, staring out at the landscape as it became more rural, rolling hills of sheep and cattle. She thought about the first two years of being mated to Bran. They’d certainly been challenging. What if she’d known that she could have broken the mating bond to him? Presumably, he had already known. Maybe he’d thought about it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” her husband said, mouth turned down. “And I didn’t.”

Leah liked to remind herself that he wasn’t psychic. He just knew her very well. “I wouldn’t have done it, either,” she said, confidently. She exhaled and tidied away the waxed paper he had wrapped her breakfast in. “I’ll certainly say this trip has been eye opening for me.”

“I concur,” Bran agreed. He patted her leg again. “You can have a nap, if you’d like. My jacket’s in the back.”

“You’re being alarmingly attentive,” she told him suspiciously, reaching into the back seats to get his jacket. It was a fleece lined one that she knew from experience made for a very comfortable pillow.

“Just trying to ensure you don’t throw me over for the Third of the Foxton Lake pack.”

She snorted, bundled his jacket into a pillow shape, and wedged it between the seat and the window. She was asleep in minutes.

*

It didn’t look remotely dangerous to Leah. It didn’t feel remotely dangerous. Instead, Sawmill Creek looked much like the creeks where she lived. A six feet wide moving body of water dotted alternatively with jagged and slippery-smooth, mossy rocks.

Bran was standing on an outcrop. “The issue is the river upstream and the depth of the creek,” he said, nodding in that direction. “The river is four times the width but shallow. This is the opposite; there are points where it’s nearly twenty feet deep. The river is essentially turned on its side to pass through. Kids trying to jump it get caught out, slip and are sucked under. There are crevices and plenty of places to get your head knocked in.”

She stood next to her husband. She supposed it was quite fast. She looked upstream, then at the steep, wooded banks on either side. “Does it flood?”

“Frequently. And suddenly. You could come down here after a bit of rain and be swept away.”

“Do you feel anything Other?”

Bran didn’t reply, just crouched down and studied the water. He did this for a few minutes, Leah imagined communing with whatever additional magical senses he had. She looked around. The air was quite damp down here, no doubt fuelled by the mist rising up from the fast-running, foaming water. It was very cool, smelled of wet earth and rotting leaves and very quiet, the sort of quiet that often happened after snowfall. She hadn’t heard a single bird since they had hiked down from the track where Bran had parked.

Leaving him, she walked downstream, mindful of where she put her feet. There were narrower points where she could see animals had crossed. Deer, she thought, recognizing a hoof print or two. Bark was stripped from a few trees. She imagined a werewolf being taken out by a creek like this and, well, couldn’t.

“Was it flooding when Greg died?” she asked, her voice bracingly loud though she hadn’t raised it above her normal speaking level.

Bran stood. “Yes.”

That made more sense. “Where did they find him?”

He nodded further downstream. “There’s a pool. We’ll head there next.”

Even for two werewolves, it was a slippery and treacherous walk as the natural path on either side of the creek all but disappeared at points, leaving Leah to imagine well the danger someone might be in if it flooded suddenly. She could see, as well, bored teenagers would find the deceptive danger an entertaining prospect. There was even the occasional evidence that they might be coming down here at night – cigarette butts, vaping pods and bottles of sugary alcohol. Bran, frowning, pulled the folded paper bag from her breakfast from his back pocket and picked up a few of the less biodegradable items to dispose of himself.

The pool had formed on a natural bend in the creek where the water had carved a wider, kidney-shaped area. One side was a steep, rocky cliff, the other had a shingle beach which they stood on, the slower moving water lapping at their feet. 

Leah looked up at the cliff. “Could he have fallen from there?” It was high enough that if a werewolf fell, hit their head and dropped into the water there would be a much more significant chance that they could die.

“Perhaps. There was signs of head trauma.”

“Does this feel creepy to you as well?”

Bran nodded.

Leah took a few deep breaths to see if she could scent anything unusual. She got nothing. If it had been Other – fae or vampire, she would have smelled it. She had an excellent nose. But her husband was far more attuned to death than she, a product of his witch genes, and twenty people had died in the Creek since the turn of the century.

She noted that the hairs were standing up on his arms. His entire body was on edge.

Sighing, Leah bent down to unlace her boots.

“What are you doing?”

“Going into the water,” she said, as if this was obvious. In her experience, if there was something malevolent, it wouldn’t be able to resist temptation. 

Bran didn’t like it but he nodded and reached down to do the same, though he only went as far as rolling up his jeans to his knees. Leah took off her jeans, folded them carefully and put them on a dry patch of rock. She took off her sweater, leaving her T-shirt on. She wound her hair into a ball on the top of her head and then waded in carefully after her husband. The rocks underfoot were slippery and smooth but very uneven. It grew deep quickly and she knotted her T-shirt under her bra.

“The current’s very strong,” she said when she was waist deep, turning to look at Bran who had stopped a yard or two behind her. As she did so, she felt a much stronger push from beneath, almost physical, _almost_ strong enough to take her legs out.

Alerted by the look on her face, Bran jolted forward and grabbed her by her upper arm. “What is it?” he asked.

Keen eyes studying the water, looking for ripples that evidenced life beyond the already fast-moving water, she shook her head slowly. “I don’t know.”

With no sign of warning, it happened again and this time Leah plunged her hands down, as if to grab whatever it was, dislodging Bran’s hold on her. Her fingers brushed through a significantly colder patch, and then it was gone.

“ _Out_ ,” Bran commanded. He reached for her once more.

She had a moment to think, _Too late_ , as the cold patch hit her legs and thighs, fully taking her out. She hit the water, backwards, Bran’s yell in her ears as she was submerged. Expecting to be dragged in the direction of deeper water, Leah kicked out violently, clawing at the water. Instead, she got a face-full of freezing water, an impression of deep rage, and then was abruptly left alone.

Bran hauled her up and backwards, out of the pool. Vaguely she could hear him swearing, using the kind of language he regularly took members of their pack to task for.

Wet, cold, and shocked, Bran and Leah sat on the shingle beach, panting. “What the heck was that?” she demanded.

*

Back in the truck, heaters on and stripping down to change into the spare sweats that every member of the pack kept in their car, Bran listed freshwater Other creatures and myths from his expansive memory.

Leah shook her head, pulled on a sweatshirt. “It wasn’t corporeal. It was just this force.”

“Ghost, then,” he said succinctly.

“Water ghost?”

“Water _poltergeist_. It attacked you.”

She arched her hips to wriggle into the grey pants. She was still slightly damp. “Does such a thing exist?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Leah crossed her legs on the bench seat, tucking her cold feet underneath herself, rubbing them with her hands. Bran handed her his jacket. “Put this on.”

“I’m fine.”

“Put it on.”

His voice brokered no argument so she did so. She adjusted the aim of the heating vents. The car windows were steaming up. “It was very angry,” she said, trying to put into words the impression she had got in the seconds she had been underwater. “But not towards me. Just generally.”

Bran nodded. She glanced over at him, now dressed head to toe in sweats, damp hair curling in the way it did when it was humid, and laughed. “Those are Charles’s,” she said. Leah, presumably, was wearing Anna’s. She was a few inches shorter than Leah but it didn’t make much difference. Charles’s sweats engulfed Bran. He looked like a child wearing his father’s clothes rather than the other way around.

Her husband gave her a dry-as-paper glare.

She spluttered. “You look _adorable_.” He really did.

If anything, his glare became desert-like. “I am two millennia old, Leah.”

This made her laugh harder. Tears crept from the corners of her eyes and she pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands so she could try to muffle her laughter by covering her face. She was hysterical.

“It’s the shock,” Bran muttered, definitely not used to her laughing at him. He was half-smiling though, as if he couldn’t help himself. 

When she had calmed down, they remembered the thermos of coffee Bran had brought with them. They drank cups of the still-hot, sweetened coffee gratefully. “Was this remarkably prescient of you?” she asked, toasting him with her little plastic cup that tasted vaguely of soup it must have once held.

He shook his head. “I think I just wanted coffee. Do you think the ghost could cause harm?”

Leah sighed. “Kill a werewolf? Maybe. It could certainly push. But—” She scrunched up her face in thought. “It doesn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel that kind of rage. It felt, oh, hopeless. Angry but… hopeless.”

“Could it have just been trying to get your attention?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.” She watched him rolling the sleeves of his sweatshirt up. Her mouth twitched but she controlled herself. “Ghosts are usually spirits of dead people, aren’t they? What if it was Greg? Or a human who died there?”

Bran nodded. “That’s right.”

There was, of course, one person of their acquaintance who had more than a passing familiarity with ghosts. “I guess you could ask _her_ to come and have a look,” Leah said, knowing she sounded utterly insincere in this suggestion.

It was Bran’s turn for his lips to twitch. He wiped down the front window. “I shall take that under advisement.”

She scowled but was, thankfully, in a balanced enough emotional state where the annoyance about Mercedes’s existence didn’t take hold like it normally did.

*

Bran drove them to a diner he had stopped at with Casper and Arnold on their hunting trip and they had what was commonly referred to as brunch but was really a second, often more elaborate breakfast. Leah had a stack of pancakes about the size of her head, accompanied by a fruit salad and a pot of tea. Bran had steak, eggs and two portions of home fries.

Halfway through the meal, Bran looked at her, thoughtfully. “Your hair is very long at the moment.”

Leah could probably count on two hands the number of times Bran had made a comment on her appearance. She had taken out her braid to let her hair dry and left it. Damp, it was nearly to her waist. “My stylist moved to Vancouver.”

This made Bran blink. “And you can’t get another one?”

“Not one I _like_.” She stabbed at a strawberry. “It’s very inconvenient.”

Bran sliced off a piece of steak and chewed it. “You could ask Tag to cut your hair. He does mine.”

“The last time Tag did my hair, it was lopsided.” She paused. “On purpose.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case.”

Leah lifted her eyebrows. “Are you, though?”

Her husband wisely chose not to say anything and luckily the waiter arrived to refill their coffees, which meant they both avoided a confrontation on the relative degrees to which their pack liked or disliked Leah.

On their way back to the truck, Bran’s cell rang. It was Charles. He put the cell phone on the dashboard in the car so they could both be involved in the conversation.

“So, Barnabas hasn’t seen or heard from Sven in several decades and in fact thought he was still with Batiste’s pack, just thought they’d dropped out of touch. He did see Sven – he couldn’t remember _precisely_ when,” Charles’s voice took on a note of amusement, “but he thought it was around the 22nd or 23rd of October in 1977 because it was definitely a weekend but it was before the full moon.”

Leah exchanged a look with Bran. “Barnabas should be protected at all costs,” she whispered. Bran grinned.

“What was that?” Charles asked.

“Nothing, your step-mother was being witty. Continue.”

Obviously the thought that Leah could be ‘witty’ gave Charles pause because it took him a moment to continue. “Well, he saw him, said he seemed pretty happy. He did mention that there was a woman in the pack who was bothering everyone but it was an offhand comment that Barnabas didn’t see fit to discuss.”

In the 1970s there had been two females in the pack – Angela and April. One who later disappeared, one who effectively ran away, back to her first Alpha. There was definitely _something_ weird going on in the Foxton Lake pack, Leah decided.

“Did Barnabas give any impressions as to Sven’s character?”

“All round good guy. Quite mild mannered, though dominant. He became Batiste’s Second when he joined the pack and Arnold was the Third. He, ah, liked that Batiste’s pack wasn’t so involved with the Marrok.” Bran grunted quietly in acknowledgement. It was often the case with lone wolves. “Apart from all that, he had very little more to detail but passed on his regards.”

“Thank you, Charles. Very good. Is everything else fine at home?”

“Pleasantly so.”

Leah supposed he meant compared to last time. She huffed.

“Have you moved my bookshelves?” Bran asked, darkly.

“No, _Da_ , your bookshelves have remained where they are. We aren’t staying at the house. Though, Anna wants to know if the chest freezer in the garage has always made that noise.”

“What noise?” Leah asked, alarmed. There was several hundred dollars’ worth of frozen meat in that freezer.

“I think that answers that question,” her husband said mildly. 

She leaned forward towards the phone. “Is it still working?”

“Yes, we checked, everything is still frozen. Do you want me to order you a new one, just in case?” Charles offered.

“No, can you call Eric and get him to come and take a look. I don’t want to get a new one if the old one can be fixed.” Maybe it just needed to be turned on and off again, which seemed to be this century’s answer to most electrical problems. 

“Fine,” Charles said shortly, obviously wishing he’d not brought it up.

On the drive back towards town, they went through what they knew.

“Sven, first to disappear. Could have gone lone wolf again but mentioned a troubling pack female. Either Angela or April,” Leah summarized.

“Or our mysterious human woman. If she was part of the extended pack before that photograph had been taken.”

Leah had forgotten. She often did with the humans. She raised her hand. “Good point. A few years _after_ Sven disappears, April runs away. If we ignore the kidnapper story, she literally decides it would be better to go back to her old Alpha than return to Batiste. Keep in mind, Batiste has been relatively independent of you. It wasn’t like he was going to run to you to say that one of his people had killed a depraved human.”

“But neither would Digby,” Bran added.

“Yes, neither would Digby,” she sighed. “But she changes her name and never speaks to Batiste again. That’s very odd.” 

“Agreed.”

“Then we have a couple of decades of nothing, no one goes missing, until Angela disappears with a mysterious final email that we have all decided she didn’t write. Which suggests _someone_ got rid of her, someone who knew she was supposed to be leaving for another pack, even.”

“Which means whoever it was has to be part of Batiste’s pack.”

“Or, I guess, maybe Stein-Douglas’?”

“Maybe,” Bran said, sounding as if he thought this unlikely. He reached for his cell phone and dialed.

“Sire?” Juste answered.

Bran almost did a full body flinch. He had all but ordered Juste to cease using this form of respect, hoping that the man would eventually relax. Leah thought it charming and had suggested on more than one occasion that it should be adopted by the rest of the pack. Juste called Leah ‘my lady’.

“Juste, I would like you to go to Idaho and interview a member of Terrance Digby’s pack for me.”

“It would be my honor to serve you in this matter. I will leave immediately.” This was followed by the sounds of swift action. Doors opening. The scrape of leather. Zippers.

Bran’s forehead briefly touched the steering wheel before he straightened again. “This isn’t life or death, Juste. At least,” he sighed, “not imminent. The purpose is to establish what information she has about her previous pack, namely her thoughts and feelings on the members of it and why she chose to leave it.”

“I understand. Am I to assume she is an innocent? No force shall be required to extract information?”

“I couldn’t comment on her innocence but certainly no force should be required. Charles has her details. Go see him and he’ll give you funds. I presume you’re fine with flying?”

“I find it quite soothing, sire.”

At the bug-eyed looked her husband gave the cell phone, Leah shoved a mouthful of her sweatshirt into her mouth and bit down. Bran slapped her thigh which, if he thought it would stop her from laughing, did quite the opposite. She curled over, shoulders shaking. “Excellent,” her husband said, his voice ever-so-slightly quivering. He stabbed the hang-up button and shook his finger at her. “ _Leah_.”

She let her laughter out. “Your face!” She veritably howled, bent double because it hurt her stomach.

Grumbling, Bran rang Charles back whilst Leah got a hold of herself. “Juste is on his way to you. He’s going to Idaho to speak to May née April and I’d like you to give him the background.”

“Interesting choice,” Charles said.

“I decided Asil wouldn’t be able to cope with Digby.”

“No, he would probably kill him.”

“Leah agrees with you. And I’m in no mood to order the Moor not to kill a man I personally find offensive as well.”

Bran hung up on Charles.

“You know,” Leah said thoughtfully, seriousness descending abruptly. “Charles could depose Digby.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”

*

Leah turned her head, catching the back of her reflection in the mirror. “I think you did a really good job.”

After she had showered, Bran had suggested he cut her hair and had produced a pair of scissors. Despite his apparent ready enthusiasm, she had made him watch an instructional YouTube video and then she had sat very still whilst he had chopped inches off her hair. Now that it was dry, she could see the cut more clearly. Her natural wave had returned and it nestled three or four inches below her shoulders. She swooshed it about from side to side, enjoying the lightness.

Bran was still lying on the bed where he had collapsed after she had surprised – and delighted – him by ‘thanking’ him enthusiastically on her knees. They were lucky the house was still empty because he had used her real name several times.

He finally pulled his arm from where he had draped it over his eyes. “I hope you didn’t tip your previous stylist like that,” he joked.

She smirked. “I’m pretty sure he was a homosexual.”

Her husband sat up and put his pants back on. “Out of interest, how frequently do you get your hair cut?”

Leah turned back to the mirror and brushed her hair back, beginning the process of French braiding it. “It grows fast so, ideally, every six weeks or so.”

She saw Bran’s eyes light up. “Really.”

“Is this a permanent position, you’re looking for, Bran Cornick?”

He came to stand behind her, his hands loosely on her hips and meeting her eyes in the reflection. “It certainly is if the terms of payment are always the same.”

Flirting was something they did very rarely, if at all, without either of them needing something from the other. She chuckled and tied off the end of her braid and leaned back against him. “I’m amenable if you are.”

They heard the sound of a truck pulling up outside. “We need to find out who the two people in the picture are,” she murmured.

“To not raise suspicion, we can only speak to Batiste,” he said, resting his chin on her head.

“I could ask Arnold? I cleaned his room. It’s plausible that I might have noticed it was the same one as Batiste’s and am just interested.”

Bran thought about it. “Regardless of species, the motives for murder are generally limited to a handful of reasons. Love, or more accurately, lust. Money. And of course hate in all its innumerable forms. The fact that they have both kept the same photograph suggests for them, that was the peak of this pack. That there was something to be cherished.”

She saw where he was going. “There was something between Angela and Batiste.” Lust or love, who knew. “Maybe someone else in the pack didn’t like that. Maybe Arnold. Or maybe Batiste isn’t the man we think he is.”

“Perhaps Sven was involved with Angela. And Batiste removed the competition.”

Leah winced. She really didn’t want this to be the case. She’d had quite enough of being disappointed by people.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs, recognizably Casper’s. They both stayed still, listening. His bedroom door opened and then drawers opened and closed rapidly. Then he ran back down the stairs. A minute later, the car left.

She wondered what he had come back for. “What does Casper do for work again?”

“He’s a foreman for a local construction company. They’re building one of those out of town housing developments but the project has had several hold-ups. Apparently a local environmental group is claiming they’re building on a flood plain and the houses will be impossible to insure.”

“Did you think it odd last night that he mentioned going to Beth’s house?”

“Not particularly. They seem quite close to me.”

She tilted her head back so she could look at him and not at his reflection. “Really? What made you think that?”

“She was pretty angry that Arnold punished him the other morning and not in defense of your maidenly sensibilities. And when we went to Batiste’s for the day and she was deprived of your company, he took her out for lunch to cheer her up.”

Leah had missed that entirely. “He seemed annoyed about the ghost.”

“No more than an older brother would be over a silly sibling, I thought.”

Perhaps that was true. Perhaps she had been mistaken. She was often wrong about things.

“Though, her ghost does require investigation,” Bran admitted. “As I don’t believe in coincidences. You may have to take her up on the offer of staying over.”

“You, too?”

He nudged her head with his nose. “You can handle it.”

From her control freak of a husband, that was a fairly large compliment. “All right. I’ll see if I can wrangle an invitation.”

*

Casper’s choice of the word ‘mausoleum’ was apt.

“Wow,” Leah said, slamming the door of the truck closed and looking up. It was red brick, two-story, Victorian-style house. At the front there was a wrap-around porch and on the right hand side, the roof peaked in a round turret with a circular window and pointed witch’s hat roof. Were it not for the obvious deterioration – the missing tiles, the evidence of rotting wood – it would be beautiful.

“Amazing isn’t it? It was built in 1870,” Beth explained, not without pride.

Leah looked around. There was nothing but pasture and trees for miles. “What… is this style of house doing all the way out here?”

“Some rich guy with a whim.” Beth shrugged and took Leah’s bag from the trunk.

The inside was dated, as if no one had decorated since the 1970s. Leah was aware that it was very easy for werewolves to get comfortable in one style and never change, which was why she was a regular subscriber to fashion and interior design magazines. She forced herself to update her house every twenty years, regardless of whether she wanted to or not. In a similar vein, she was meticulous about her wardrobe. Perhaps, she could admit, _too_ meticulous.

“So, just as a general warning, any light switch or socket that has a little red dot on, don’t use it.”

Standing in the front entrance, Leah could immediately see three. “Okay,” she said easily.

“Um. The wiring is a little… funny.” Beth continued up the ornate oak staircase, which creaked loudly under her feet. Leah followed.

Upstairs it was clear that the left ‘wing’ of the house was unused. There was plastic sheeting over the corridor that bulged with the presence of a strong draft. Perhaps the wind Casper mentioned. On the right, a long corridor led to half a dozen doors.

Beth walked all the way down the corridor to the door at the end. “This is your room. It used to by mine,” she said.

Leah saw immediately she was in the ‘turret’ and she smiled reflexively. “It’s very lovely,” she said with feeling. It was. It was clearly much cared for. The walls were freshly painted, there were thick curtains with a light ditsy print and a rag rug on the floor. The bed was a double, with a handmade quilt, and the brass headboard gleamed. There was a distinct smell of furniture polish.

Beth looked pleased with Leah’s praise. She put down Leah’s bag. “Let me show you the bathroom.”

Like Leah’s room, the bathroom was also very clearly well-maintained, though it was an old green-colored suite that honestly blistered Leah’s eyeballs.

“I have to warn you, the hot water can be very temperamental – oh, and we don’t have phone signal out here!” Beth exclaimed with a gasp, her hand going to her mouth. “I forgot to warn you.”

“Ah,” Leah said. Yes, that would have been nice to know. Bran would have wanted to know that.

“Um. Also the phone line isn’t working.” Beth winced fulsomely. “I’m really sorry. I’m so used to it that it completely slips my mind. I don’t often have guests.”

“It’s fine.” Leah smiled reassuringly. Bran would survive without her for a night. They’d certainly gone longer without being in touch. It was admittedly an area they were working on improving, however, since his ‘trip to Africa’.

Still. No way to contact the outside world. Old, haunted house in the middle of nowhere. Leah was aware of popular culture enough to recognize that this could be the start of a horror movie.

As if to emphasize that, the first door of the night slammed closed down the hall.

“That’s the wind,” Beth said, firmly.

*

Naturally, it wasn’t the wind. When Leah went back to her room to unpack the small hostess gift she had brought, the doors to the Queen Anne armoire were open. She closed them and stood back. Was it colder in the room than before? She couldn’t tell. She closed the curtains, just in case there was a draft.

Picking up the candle she had bought up from a boutique on Main Street that morning, Leah followed the noises of Beth making tea in the kitchen. It looked like a typical farmhouse kitchen, with a big range cooker, a worn wooden table and, to her surprise, a cat curled up one of the kitchen chairs.

“Yes, that’s Maurice,” Beth said in anticipation of Leah’s reaction, as she poured water into a teapot. 

The amber-eyed beast eyed Leah suspiciously. “Cats hate werewolves.” 

“Oh, he does. He and I have reached a détente, however, and mostly he just ignores anyone else. He’s getting old, now. He was a gift. After my mom died.”

“How thoughtful,” she murmured, taking a seat as far away from Maurice as she could.

Beth put the teapot, in a knitted affair, on the table and fetched two purple spotted cups. “Do you take lemon? Or cream? Sugar?”

“Lemon, please. This is for you,” Leah said, thrusting out the candle.

“Oh really? Thank you!” Beth made the appropriate show of unwrapping, and sniffing, the candle. “Oh it’s lovely. Is that lavender? My favorite.”

That was lucky. It was the only candle that had been available in the shop.

Beth kept up a stream of fairly light-hearted conversation, talking about her job, the kids she taught at school, some of her colleagues. Only a few doors slammed during the conversation and they both ignored them. As it grew dark, Beth took Leah into the ‘den’, a cozy little space off the side of the kitchen. Leah assumed there were other rooms on the first floor but, like the upstairs, were closed off.

It was in this small room that Leah’s gift was placed, dead center in the middle of the mantelpiece. There were several framed photographs, which Leah perused. Somehow Leah wasn’t surprised to see the same photograph she and Bran had regularly studied but before she opened her mouth to ask Beth if she knew who the woman might be, her question was answered for her by a mother-daughter portrait photograph to the right.

“Is this your mom?” Leah asked, knowing she was right. The girl – a young teenager – was the spitting image of Beth.

Beth’s smile was one of affectionate pride. “Yes, that’s her.”

It was the same woman in the photograph of the pack, only older. She must have had Beth quite late in life. “Your mom was the connection to the Foxton Lake pack, then,” Leah said.

“Yes. She kept house for Batiste.” Beth’s smile dropped suddenly. She looked very uncomfortable and unhappy and in a rare moment of sensitivity, Leah decided not to push it. She truly didn’t want to hurt the girl.

“Shall we watch a movie?” Leah suggested brightly.

Beth had several shelves of DVDs, most of which Leah had thankfully seen. She picked something she hadn’t watched recently but knew was relatively innocuous and settled down on the couch to watch. She was just wondering how she was going to bring up the topics she needed to when Beth did it for her.

“What do you think about our pack, then? Do you like us?” Beth asked bluntly, her brown eyes round with earnestness.

Leah appreciated a no-nonsense approach. She wished more people exercised it. “I do. A lot,” she replied honestly. 

Beth nodded, as if this agreement was expected. “Batiste is a good Alpha.”

“He certainly seems it. He has a very different style from Angus.”

“Is it true that your Alpha didn’t want you and Bryn to get together?”

Though she was reasonably certain she could lie convincingly to Beth, Leah could side-step this one easily. She sighed as if Angus was a personal trial to her. “Angus has always had some very strong opinions on who his people should marry.”

Beth gave Leah a wide smile. “You seem kinda perfect for each other to me.”

Leah thought so, too. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry Casper is pestering you. He sometimes can’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

She glanced at Beth sharply. “Does he pester you like that?”

Beth’s revolted expression confirmed Bran’s theory. “No! Oh my God, no! That would be super gross.”

She grinned. “Some would say he’s pretty good looking.”

Beth was frantically shaking her head. “I’ve known him all my life. And, once, when I was little, I got a really bad stomach bug at Batiste’s house and Casper had to hose me down.”

The surprised laugh that came out of Leah shocked her. “Oh goodness,” she said.

“It came out _both ends_ ,” Beth whispered conspiratorially.

Leah rolled to her side, pressed her face into the armrest and laughed heartily. “That’s… such a touchingly disgusting story.” 

“See, there are just too many bodily fluids between us.”

They watched the movie for a little longer, Leah periodically chortling. “You must have spent a lot of time at the house, then?”

“Yeah. I was in and out of there quite a bit. I’m glad Rolf’s got a baby now. It’ll be nice to have a kid around. Do you want kids?”

Leah abruptly lost any remnants of humor. “Ah. Not really.”

“Not at all?”

Since this was unlikely to be a conversation that would get back to her husband, Leah was able to admit something significantly closer to the truth than she would usually allow. That she had occasionally thought about what her child with Bran could look like. “If it was possible for me to have a child with my husband, I might. But…” Leah didn’t need to finish. Beth was a female werewolf. The choice had been taken from her, too.

“You wouldn’t adopt? Or, you can do surrogacy now. If you have the money.”

“We’ve not really talked about it,” Leah said. Also a truth. When they had been mated, the science didn’t exist. And it was clear that Bran hadn’t ever wanted children with her, blood or no. To countermand any hurt that caused her, Leah had often affected a slightly more violent attitude to children than she might otherwise have done. Until Kara, of course. Then she had let things slip just a little.

Perhaps because the question had been so personal, Leah tried one of her own. “So, apart from Casper, is there anyone else you’re interested in, in the pack? Or outside, I guess.”

A door slammed loudly, much closer than before. Both Leah and Beth jumped.

“I should get dinner on,” Beth announced. Her cheeks were slightly pink. From the sudden start, Leah wondered, or the question she had asked?

*

They ate in the kitchen, Maurice staring malevolently at Leah the entire time and Leah staring right back. “He’s pretty ballsy, for a cat,” Beth giggled.

Leah twirled her fork in the spaghetti. “No kidding.”

They talked a little more about the pack, Beth more than happy to let Leah in to any gossip that she might have. Rolf and his wife were only married, not mated, she confirmed.

“Oh, really? Shame,” Leah said.

“Yeah. I guess.” Beth didn’t seem to care much and broke off some more garlic bread. “Seems to me, it only really makes sense if you’re both werewolves.”

Since Leah had always been much of this opinion – and if she hadn’t been, she suspected watching Sam’s series of wives fade and die would have done it for her – she could do nothing but agree. “We’re few and far between, though.”

Beth’s grin was toothy. “Just makes us worth waiting for.”

Leah laughed.

Just after ten, second movie on, the power went.

“Ah, damn,” Beth sighed as they sat in the dark. “That’s been happening a lot recently.”

“Is it a fuse?”

She shook her head. “I’ve had an electrician out and he can’t work out what it is. A loose wire somewhere. It usually just comes back of its own accord. Sometimes in a few minutes, sometimes it can take hours.” She winced, obviously very embarrassed. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s no bother. I’m actually pretty tired,” Leah said. It was no lie. Whilst she enjoyed being _with_ Bran, she wasn’t actually used to sleeping with him every night, and in such a small bed, too.

“Oh good!”

It really was _very_ dark. Outside, a solid and unremitting night sky met the dark, flat landscape. It was even overcast that night, so no stars or moon broke up the view. Though she could see perfectly well in the dark, it was by no means as perfect as her day-time vision. Leah was not easily scared – she had seen and done too much for that - but she had to admit the lack of a warm glow from lighting added to the general spooky ambiance of the old house.

Leah had a quick shower in tepid water and brushed her teeth and hurried to her bedroom for the night. The longing to contact Bran was almost painful and she checked her phone, uselessly, noting the absence of any signal whatsoever. The power was also running down quickly as it constantly searched for signal. She turned it off.

She lay in bed, listening first to Beth pottering around, using the bathroom, and then going back to her own room. Then she listened to the house settle which, being as old as it was, it did so _loudly_. The first time a door slammed somewhere in the house, she jumped. By the third or fourth, she pulled a pillow over her head and tried to ignore it. And failed.

She fully leaped out of bed when the doors of the wardrobe in her room opened and shut. She stood there, panting, and tried the light switch on the bedside table. Nothing happened. With a racing heart and burning cheeks, Leah forced herself to creep closer and close the doors.

When nothing untoward happened, Leah hurried back to bed, drawing the comforter up to her chin and lay there, staring at the wardrobe, as if daring the ghost to do it again.

A few minutes passed and her heart rate returned to normal. She risked closing her eyes and the lamp on her bedside table fell over, jolting her upright. 

The following few hours were punctuated by a nearly continuous assault of doors, drawers and small things falling over in Leah’s room. In the end, she turned everything that could fall over easily on its side. She shoved a cushion between the doors of the wardrobe. She took out the drawers of the dresser. She put her bag behind the main door. She tied back the curtains.

Even with these measures, she was still a victim - of the ghost or of her own anxious mind. Each time she tried to get some sleep, she was frequently interrupted by terrible half-waking dreams. Of being under water. Of being trapped. Of helpless rage. She dreamed of Bran, drowning, and she woke with tears on her face. Once she woke and Maurice had made his way onto her bed because her bedroom door was open, her bag shoved halfway across the room. He raked his claws at her face, drawing blood, then hissed at her and shot out of the room.

And it was _so cold_ even for her werewolf body temperature. She had never physically missed Bran’s presence in her bed more. She didn’t think she had ever missed Bran _himself_ more.

When dawn crept over the horizon, she sighed with relief. Then the light on her bedside table – which was on its side – turned on. The power was back.

Shattered, Leah managed an hour of sleep before the sound of Beth using the bathroom woke her once again. Then a new day began.

*

As Beth drove them to Batiste’s house just after lunch the next day, Leah turned on her cell phone. There were six messages and three missed calls from Bran – the most she had ever received from him in one go in her cell-phone-owning-life.

_Call me when you can get some privacy._

_Leah, why aren’t you answering my phone calls?_

_Why have you turned off your cell phone?_

_Leah?_

The last two read. _I’ve just been helpfully advised that the house has no signal._ Despite this, the next message read, _Good night._

She had an unspeakably maudlin urge to hug her phone to herself.

Technically, as they were in their second week of their ‘trial’, they should have been spending the week with Batiste. But he had been called to an urgent – in the map world – authentication by a long-standing client which meant Leah was spending Monday doing what she had done the previous week: cleaning the Alpha’s house.

She messaged Bran. _Definitely ghost in Beth’s house. Beth’s mother is the woman in the photograph._ Then, because she was tired, _I missed you._

Leah regretted the sentiment seconds after she sent it and frantically wished she could recall it or delete it. It wasn’t the sort of thing she and Bran said to each other.

Embarrassed, she shoved her cell phone away abruptly and pasted a big smile on her face. “So, we should do the couches today,” she said, slipping easily into the commanding tone she used on her own pack.

“And I want to do the drapes,” Beth added. “I don’t think the ones in his study have been done since Mom made them.”

“Perfect,” Leah said, thinking she only had to get through a few hours and then she could go to bed. With her mate. And sleep until the morning. 

The first roadblock to Leah getting her wish was when they pulled up in front of Batiste’s house and found Casper sitting on the porch with a beer.

“Ladies, had a nice sleepover?” he asked with a leer.

Beth snorted as she jumped out of her truck. “Leah says I _definitely_ have a ghost.”

Casper ‘pffted’ and took a long slug of his beer. “That old house is drafty as hell. You shouldn’t encourage her.” He gave Leah a disapproving, somehow more paternal look. It was the sort of expression Leah had regularly been on the receiving end since she’d joined her husband’s pack. She was immune.

“No, it’s definitely a ghost,” Leah said, emulating her husband’s very driest tone. “I’ve come across them before. It’s actually a poltergeist since it can move things.”

“Leah had to ghost-proof her room. She’s barely slept!” Beth said with alacrity. Beth passed him into the house, heading straight for Batiste’s office.

There was a shade of doubt clinging to Casper’s expression. “Truly?” he asked Leah.

“Truly.”

“What do we do about that, I wonder,” he asked, mostly to himself.

Leah wondered as well. She wasn’t about to suggest they call in Bran’s coyote definitively-not-daughter. She wasn’t even certain Mercedes had the wherewithal to deal with a ghost. She mostly stubbornly ignored her gifts, from what she had overheard from Bran and others. If Leah had magical powers, she would have done her very best to plumb their depths.

“Who died in her house?” Leah asked, lowering her voice. “Her mother?”

Casper winced and then nodded. “But, also, the old man who lived there before. And I’m sure many before that. It’s an old house.” He shrugged. “It could be anybody.”

Off work again – ‘fucking lawyers’ – Casper had decided to ‘help’ Leah and Beth with their chores. Beth cast Leah an apologetic look when he announced this. “Perhaps you could work on the front yard,” she suggested to him.

“I’d much rather be in the house.”

“Fine, then,” Leah said, happily. “ _I’ll_ work in the front. You can help Beth in the house.”

Looking stumped, Casper was handed a bucket and a mop by a giggling Beth and told to wash the floors. Leah grabbed her headphones from her bag and all but skipped outside to get to work. 

*

Leah had to give it to Casper – he did have a strong sense of fun and that alone kept her awake through her ‘chores’. At one point she came in to get herself her third iced coffee of the afternoon as she felt herself wilting and found he had strapped polishing clothes to his bare feet and was skating around the house, to the deep amusement of Beth. Later, he put loud music on whilst he was cleaning the windows and treated Leah to renditions of some of his favorite rock hits, tilting out of the window and serenading her. She ended up pausing to begrudgingly give him a round of applause, leaning against her shovel. He had a very good singing voice.

She admitted, later, that the timing of Bran’s and Arnold’s arrival could have been better.

“Could you perhaps put my wife down,” Bran suggested quietly, standing in the open doorway.

Casper did so, abruptly dropping down so Leah could jump off his shoulders. “Light-bulbs,” she whispered, recognizing the look in her husband’s eyes as extremely dangerous. “We are changing light-bulbs.” She presented one from her pocket as evidence.

Her husband was gritting his teeth. “There is, I imagine, a ladder.”

There was, Leah belatedly also imagined, a ladder. Why she had thought Casper’s suggestion that she sit on his shoulders to replace the light-bulbs in the chandelier in the hallway had been a good idea, she now didn’t know. She felt very stupid.

“I’m very tired,” she said.

Bran raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure.”

It was not the reunion Leah had imagined, had she allowed herself to imagine it. She was grateful, at least, that he had ignored her over-emotional message about missing him. She had deleted it herself, so she could pretend it didn’t exist.

They had dinner in Batiste’s house and she didn’t have to cook it. Rolf forced her to hold the baby – she was _very_ tired by this point but thankfully so was the baby, who was solidly asleep the entire time. She didn’t damage him in any way whatsoever. Indeed, he was a nice, faintly pleasant smelling weight in her arms and when she was holding him no one, particularly Casper, seemed to bother her. When she handed him back she admitted he was very cute.

She was almost bouncing off the walls when Bran nudged her towards the truck after they’d tidied away the meal. She crawled into the back. “Oh god, I’m so tired,” she told the window as she pressed herself against the cool glass. “I am never staying with Beth again.”

Casper turned to look at her from his elevated position in the front. “Did you meet the cat?” This was said with intensity. As if he knew.

“ _Maurice_ ,” Leah hissed, leaning forward. She touched her already-healed face. “The little bastard attacked me in the night.”

Casper roared with laughter. For some reason, he slapped Arnold on the arm.

“That is my fault. I thought he would be a good companion,” Arnold admitted heavily. “He was really very amenable as a kitten.”

“He loathed me,” Leah muttered. “I did nothing and he loathed me. They always loathe me.” She dropped back into her seat, sighing. “Ghost aside, the house needs too much work. You’re right. She should sell it and move into town.”

“You try convincing her of that,” Casper grunted. “How will she meet someone if she’s trapped out there?”

“She wants to marry a werewolf. So unless one of you wants to volunteer, she will have to move,” Leah advised.

Arnold met Leah’s eyes in the rear view mirror. “She told you that?”

“Yes. Why? Is that strange?”

“To get Beth to talk about her love life, yes,” Casper said. This time, when he turned to smile at her, it was purely warmly platonic, nothing her husband could complain about. “I’m glad she has someone to confide in.”

Bran put his hand on her thigh and squeezed. Hard.

*

Leah woke at two in the morning, suddenly, caught in the remnants of last night’s nightmare. The solid weight of her mate, even the differing softness of the mattress, relieved her down to her toes.

Bran lifted his head, wide awake with her. “What?”

“Thank God, I’m here,” she announced, lying back down. She cuddled closer to him, casting her leg over his, all but draping herself over his back. He was very warm and the memory of how cold she had been came back to her in a flash. She shivered.

“I was worried,” Bran said, sounding grumpy.

“I had no idea there wouldn’t be signal. Or that her landline wouldn’t be working. We also had a power cut.” She kissed his shoulder. “I’m sorry for worrying you.” Though it was ridiculous - he would have known through their bond that she was fine - she loved that he had worried. She was a fool for him.

“Thankfully, it wasn’t for very long. After the third call, Casper took pity on me and told me there was no phone signal.”

“Mmm,” she said.

“I nearly drove out there to check on you.”

She squeezed him. “I would have been very grateful to see you,” Leah said, imagining for a moment the pleasure of her husband arriving like a knight on his steed. She rubbed her cheek against his skin. “I was… unnerved.”

Bran sighed. He moved suddenly, dislodging her, and sat. “Leah, I need you to tell Casper to back down.”

She lifted herself up. “Seriously?”

Bran touched his chest. “It’s bothering us. More than I would like.”

“All right,” she agreed, readily. “I’ll do it tomorrow.” She would probably enjoy doing it, too. There was nothing quite like letting a man down hard.

Her husband stared at her for a moment, then slid back down under the comforter. She settled on his chest and listened to the reassuring sound of his heartbeat. She was asleep in seconds.

*

Inevitably, she slept through Bran leaving and, rested and recovered, she remembered they’d had little chance to speak properly and Batiste was still away so they couldn’t even use him as an excuse. They would have to wait until they were alone. Normally Bran had some kind of a plan and without one she felt like she was treading water.

She fumbled for her cell phone and found a message from Beth, saying she was running late. There was nothing from Bran.

Feeling a little desperate, Leah sent him a message. _Anything from Juste?_

Then, sighing, she went to shower and her hair was almost dry by the time Beth arrived. “I’ve taken some beef mince out,” she said in greeting, saluting her with her coffee. “We could make lasagna.”

“Oh, I love lasagna.”

With significantly less hilarity than the previous day, they went through the motions of cleaning Arnold’s house. She laundered hers and Bran’s dirty laundry, including Charles’s enormous sweats, and then she watched Beth competently make two lasagnas big enough to feed twelve.

“I called Batiste about the ghost,” Beth said.

Of course. That was what people in packs did when they had a problem. They called their Alpha. “What did he say?”

“He said he’d speak to the Marrok.” Beth was puffed up with importance.

Leah was caught off guard. “He… did?”

Beth seemed to mistake Leah’s reaction for surprise at this escalation to the highest authority in North America. “I know. I always got the impression he didn’t like the Marrok.”

“Did you?” she said weakly.

“Yes.” Beth shrugged. “He thinks it’s all just wasteful bureaucracy.”

This was news to Leah. “Does he.”

“You don’t agree?”

Leah opened, then closed, her mouth in defense of her husband. “I… think the Marrok has a very difficult job.”

Beth shrugged again. As well she might. She wouldn’t have the faintest scope of what Bran’s job entailed. “Was Bryn cross? Yesterday? You didn’t talk much.”

“Yes.” Leah wiped her hand over her face. “He wants me to speak to Casper. It’s making him a little crazy.”

“You probably should. Maybe he thinks he has a chance.”

“He doesn’t.”

“ _I_ can see that,” Beth said staunchly.

Leah needed to change the topic from her marriage. It felt a little like she was revealing too much. “Who’s Arnold seeing? Do you know?”

“Erm.” Beth’s entire face suffused with pink. “I’d rather not say.”

“So you do know! A little bird told me that it might be _two women_ and they might also both be _married_.”

The young woman turned and rifled through a drawer to get the plastic wrap to cover the tops of the lasagna. “I’m sure I don’t know, Leanne,” she said to the drawer.

This was obviously a lie which meant that perhaps Beth knew more than even their Alpha did. She wondered if that meant Arnold confided in her. She sighed. “Fine, don’t tell me.”

“He… he’s had a difficult time.”

Leah thought this defense of Arnold was faintly sweet. “Romantically?”

Beth nodded, chewing her bottom lip as she tore off plastic and covered the cooling lasagnas. Sometimes it was good to be silent, to wait out a person’s reticence with nothing more pressing than an expectant face. Leah had never been particularly good at this tactic – Bran was better.

She looked into her coffee, biting her tongue.

“He dated a woman at my school for a little while. One of the teachers. I… kind of set them up.”

It worked! Leah nodded, encouragingly, attempting to not be too transparently eager.

“It, I mean, they dated for a couple of years. I think he really liked her. But, she wanted to move to a more urban school, you know, get some more experience. And you know Arnold couldn’t leave. She didn’t understand and she was… very difficult about it. Unpleasant. He’s an accountant so he could work anywhere and she knew he didn’t have family, as least how she saw it, so when he said he didn’t want to move…”

Leah nodded. “She thought he didn’t like her that much.”

“Yeah. So they had this big fight and broke up.” Beth shrugged. “And he was miserable. Like, super miserable. He lost weight, just became utterly uninterested in anything, really. Batiste was really worried. He had to order Casper not to challenge him, not that I think he would have done.”

With a flat sense of sadness, Leah recognized the signs of a man pining for his mate. The wolf had likely already accepted this woman. She sighed, feeling even sorrier for Arnold than before.

“Anyway, he’s doing much better now. And, honestly, I don’t care what he does—” This was not true and Leah did need to use her nose to tell this, “—so long as he’s happy.” Beth gave Leah a strongly defensive look, as if she was prepared to argue further if Leah disagreed.

Leah raised her hands. “It’s none of my business what Arnold does in his private life,” she said.

*

As Leah was not one to let instructions from her mate linger, she cornered Casper as soon as the opportunity arose that evening. He gave her an easy opening, too, because the moment they were alone, he put his fingers in her loose hair and made a comment about her stylish new haircut.

She slapped his hand away, _very_ hard. “No,” she said, firmly. “You must stop, Casper. It’s entirely crossing a line.”

The surprise on his face was unfortunate, mostly for Leah who thought she had been quite clear with her disinterest. Obviously not. “I am not interested. I am _entirely_ and _forever_ taken,” she said firmly. Then she patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll make some other woman very happy. I’ve heard there are apps for this sort of thing. Perhaps you should try one.” She handed him a salad. “Please go away and put this on the table.”

At dinner, she gave up any of her former feelings on public displays of affection and sat plastered against her husband’s side, one arm draped along his thigh. Apparently they’d spent the day clearing the lake at Batiste’s house, which explained the slight smell of stale water.

Fergus suggested they watch a movie together and this time, the first time, Leah’s expression apparently conveyed how much she truly didn’t want to do that.

“I think my wife would like an early night,” Bran said, laughing easily, managing to include himself in that statement by putting his hand on the back of her neck as he stood.

“Then we’ll stay down here and turn the volume up _very loudly_ ,” Fergus said with mock-horror.

Leah stuck her tongue out at him and started stacking plates, hurriedly. Now that she had permission to leave, she wanted to leave _quickly_. She cleared the kitchen in record time, Bran smirking as he wiped down counters, and then all but ran up the stairs.

Very pointedly, their temporary housemates did turn up the TV volume which could be heard straight through the floorboards of their bedroom. Leah gave Bran a despairing look. “That is not restful.”

Bran dropped down on the bed. “Oh, you wanted to rest? I thought I was about to be ravished.”

He was wearing one of his impenetrable faces. She mouthed ‘ravished’ to herself. She was one-hundred-percent sure he had never said that word in her presence before. “Do you want to be?” Leah asked, eventually.

“Yes.”

The volume of the TV might not have been restful but it was certainly helpful. She did notice, after she had done her best to ravish her mate of two centuries, that it sounded even louder than it had done before. “Are we really that noisy?” she asked the tender skin on the inside of his elbow.

“No, they’re being dicks.”

 _Dicks_? Leah barked out an astonished laugh, which she muffled as best she could because it was truly loud and obnoxious. “Bran!”

Her husband was unrepentant, sneering slightly to reinforce his unusually acerbic statement. He scratched his chest. “Your presence has certainly added an unexpected flavor to this investigation.”

She frowned, wondering if he was chastising her. “Do you regret inviting me?”

Bran groped her behind, half-heartedly. “No, of course not.”

“Why did you invite me? If you weren’t giving Charles and Anna a taste of true Alpha-hood. You could have done this on your own.”

“You know werewolves.” He turned on his side, resting his head on his hand. “Sometimes better than I.”

This seemed unlikely.

Bran smiled at her distrust. “You do. You have a natural affinity. I knew that from the moment I met you. Just look at how quickly you have slotted yourself into this pack. They have barely tested you.”

Though it felt like he was complimenting her, Leah couldn’t find it in herself to accept it. “You know why. I’m female. And haven’t had to lie about how dominant I may or may not be.”

Bran stroked his hand down her back, resting it at the base of her spine, then drew it back up again. He repeated this movement until Leah’s eyelids started to flutter closed in relaxation, despite the pounding base beat coming from downstairs. Probably a car chase scene, she thought. “It’s more than that,” he said softly. “They tell you things. I wish—”

“You wish?” she prompted sleepily, when he paused.

“I wish our pack could see you like this.”

Any relaxation Leah had built up curled back into herself with the bloom of pain that his words had caused. She opened her eyes. Bran’s hand stopped moving, as if sensing her disquiet.

“I don’t feel my behavior is any different here,” she said crisply.

“You listen more.”

“We’re _investigating_.” She sat up, dislodging his hand. The pain inside of her was becoming a more solid thing, lodged high in her chest, burning with prickling resentment. “Are you dissatisfied with me?”

Bran made a frustrated noise and sat up with her. He took her by her chin and pulled her face to look at him. “You are dedicated to our pack. I could not ask for better.”

It was a refrain she had heard before. She had taken pleasure from it before. But… “You didn’t answer my question.”

He released her. “I could ask the same of you. I suspect neither of us would like the answer.”

Leah rolled her eyes as he easily side-stepped it again. “Oh, very clever, Bran. I never thought you cared if they disliked me. In fact,” she said, rising to her theme, her words tumbling out, “I always thought it suited you down to the ground that they did dislike me. Made _not liking me_ yourself so much easier.”

Bran’s mouth opened with his rebuttal and then she heard his teeth clack together as he held it back. He pressed his hands to his face and regrouped. “I do not want to have this argument here,” he said, quietly.

Heat rose in her face. “But you’ll agree it’s an argument we should have.”

“Probably,” he snapped. Then, surprising her, Bran took hold of her head with his hands, in a not remotely lover-like gesture, and said firmly, “Leah, I like you plenty.”

“Do you,” she said, again positively suffused with disbelief. Bran was more than capable of lying to her, as even as his mate she was sometimes unable to detect it.

“I do.” He kissed her firmly, ignoring her tensely resisting mouth. “I should think my behavior over the last week has been more than enough evidence of that, hmm?”

“That’s not _your_ behavior,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s whomever this character you are playing is.”

“Would you just accept what I’m telling you, for once in your life, Leah.” Bran kissed her again, as if he could convince her by actions alone, crowding her back onto the bed. Her body, weaker than her mind, was responding to him. “I am not that good an actor.”

She kissed him back, opening her mouth to him even though she knew well this was his way of manipulating her. He did it _all the time._ “You do not touch me at home like you do here,” she whispered against his skin.

Bran ran his teeth down her throat in precisely the perfect way to make her gasp and arch up against him. “I don’t _need_ to when we’re at home.”

“You do, actually.”

He paused and loomed over her. She could see the wheels of his mind turning, eyes flicking over her face. “Why?”

“I would find it… reassuring,” she admitted, even though it made her cringe.

This seemed to utterly blow his mind. He sank down on top of her, still obviously aroused, but that had taken a back seat for him. “ _You_ need to be reassured?”

She had never been the type of woman traditional Alpha males went for. Not the soft, meek and insipid kind who needed a man to protect them. Bran hadn’t wanted that so she had made sure she never displayed any of those characteristics. Oh, he would defend her, there was no question about it. Any disrespect shown by their pack towards her he would shut down with the full force of his nature.

But there were softer measures. And she had seen for the first time what it felt like when someone – when he – demonstrated care towards her in that way. No one had done that for her. Not in a very, very long time.

“Yes, of course,” she said slowly, attempting to overcome any embarrassment she felt as being perceived as one of those weaker females she so despised. “Just like you have needed it here.”

Bran pressed his hand against her face, his thumb resting under her bottom lip. “I did not know that. I can do that.” He kissed her again, this time more delicately, a question rather than a demand.

Downstairs the movie abruptly finished, the house plunging into silence. Leah wrapped her arms around Bran’s neck and kissed him back. 

*

Much later, they lay entwined, listening to the house settle around them and whispering their updates to each other.

“I wonder whose child she is,” Bran said.

Leah made a noise. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Of course, there had been no mention of a father. But Beth’s mother had been ‘part’ of the pack in a way, the same way as the humans in Aspen Creek were. It wasn’t a huge leap to imagine Beth was related to someone. “With the exception of Casper and Fergus, it could be anyone.”

Bran grunted. “As far as appearance goes, she has more in common with Casper than anyone else.”

That was true. They were both very fair. Though Casper had blue eyes and Beth had brown. “Is it more likely that her father has brown eyes? Her mother had blue.”

“Yes,” Bran explained slowly, “but there are exceptions. If two blue eyed parents carry the dominant brown-eyed gene, they could have a brown-eyed child.”

Leah felt her top lip curl. Her understanding of genetics was not strong – it hadn’t been something she needed to bother much with before. “That’s confusing.”

He laughed at her. But kindly. “It is. Sam could explain it for you if you’d like. As I recall, there was a diagram.”

“I would _not_ like.”

He laughed again. “So, it could genuinely be anyone in the pack. Or no one at all. I suppose there’s an easy way to answer this one. We will just have to ask Batiste tomorrow.”

“Do you think it’s relevant?”

“It is if the woman who was ‘bothering’ the pack was her mother.”

*

Batiste cleared his throat. They had arrived as he was unpacking his work bag, replacing his laptop on his desk, plugging in all the little cables and wires. “No, Beth is… her father was not a member of our pack. But I should say that I _was_ once married to her mother, Michaela.”

Bran let this settle without a single flicker of astonishment cross his face. Leah, however, recoiled. _This_ had not been on Batiste’s file, Leah thought. But then marriages to humans without the mating bond were all but ignored in their society, especially if there were no children.

“Comparatively speaking, it was a long time ago. We separated in 1981, I think. Just after this photograph was taken.” Batiste sighed fulsomely. “She… was not a happy woman. Being the wife of an Alpha didn’t suit her. Out of respect, and no doubt guilt, I bought her a house, out of town. She intended to turn it into one of those bed and breakfast places but for one reason or another it never took off. She got into some financial difficulties. So I, ah, paid her a salary to be my housekeeper.”

From wife to housekeeper. Leah’s mouth opened and closed like a guppy with astonishment. She rather thought this was something that Beth might have mentioned. _Oh, yes, my mom was Batiste’s wife once._ Unless because it had been before she had been born it wasn’t relevant to her?

Bran was not paralyzed with surprise. “What would you say was your pack’s relationship with your ex-wife?”

“Challenging. Less so, after we parted. She got on better with some than others.” Sounded much like Leah’s relationship with her pack. “Of course, everyone doted on Beth.”

Still did, Leah thought.

“And her father?”

“I am afraid I have no idea. What Michaela did in her private life was not something we naturally discussed and it was clear from the beginning that she planned to be a single mother. She’d had Beth reasonably late in life but there was no question that she was much wanted. Obviously, we never successfully had children ourselves.”

Leah translated this easily. They had wanted children but, like many human women, Michaela would probably have miscarried several times if the child she carried had the werewolf gene. Sometimes, it was simply luck – or lack thereof – of the draw. She had seen marriages fail under this pressure, particularly before a general understanding of the basics of fertility had been understood. She had to admit, Bran’s son had done much to improve that knowledge within their community. 

“Were you financially supporting her? And Beth?” Bran asked gently.

Batiste nodded. “Yes. In the end I suppose I was. More than I perhaps ought. I felt… responsible for her. For them both.”

“How did she die? Michaela?” Leah had not asked, as it hadn’t seemed relevant before.

“Cancer. Thankfully, it was a short illness.”

“Did she ask for you to Change her?” Bran wanted to know.

Batiste shook his head. “Truthfully, she deteriorated so quickly after her diagnosis that even if she had, I would have had to say no. It would have been tantamount to murder. I am puzzled as to why you think this is relevant?” he asked. “Naturally I would have mentioned all this if I thought it was.”

“One of the reports we heard was that there was a woman in your pack who was being disruptive. Around the time when Michaela was alive.”

His narrow face creased. “Disruptive?” He sat back in his chair and scratched his cheek. “I see. I admit… Michaela could be difficult, occasionally mean spirited, but I’m not sure if she was particularly _disruptive._ She was, after all, only human.”

Leah wondered how observant Batiste was. With the ease of experience, Bran regularly ignored disruptive behavior in the pack, based on his own personal view of what he saw as detrimental to pack welfare or because he thought it was something in someone else’s purview. Problems between women he saw exclusively as Leah’s responsibility, for instance, unless he felt it was Leah herself who was causing that problem. He also often relied on Charles to sort minor things out. That wasn’t to say he didn’t notice them, however, and she suspected he had to _force_ himself not to act, to instead delegate. He also expected prompt demonstrations that issues had been resolved by those to whom he had delegated.

But not all Alphas were like Bran.

So thinking, Leah smiled. “Were there any other females in the pack who were? In your opinion? Angela, for instance, or April?”

“No, not at all. I’m not for one moment suggesting we all get along swimmingly all the time. You saw Fergus’s and Rolf’s behavior the other night. But that’s normal.” He spread his hands open on his desk. “I’m sure you’ve experienced it in your own pack. Rumor has it, your pack has been known to be significantly more dramatic.”

“Our pack is not a model I would suggest anyone bases theirs on,” Bran said drily, taking no offense if that had been what Batiste had intended. Leah prickled on behalf of her pack, though she knew well how ‘dramatic’ their wolves could be. “But we can agree that groups of men and women can create their own strife. Often over nothing.”

For some reason, Leah felt Bran was making a point towards her. She frowned.

The Alpha of Foxton Lake leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his stomach. “This line of questioning suggests you _do_ think there is a connection between the incidents.” His eyes glinted.

“We are undecided, at this point. However, there are some elements that are strange. We believe the last email sent from Angela to Stein-Douglas was not written by her. The only people who could have known that Angela was moving to another pack was one of your own people.” 

Batiste winced. “Yes. That is a logical conclusion.”

“We can find no trace of her and Charles is very good at finding people.”

He covered his face with his hands. “So you believe she is dead.”

“In all likelihood. So we are looking at the usual angles – would someone have wanted her dead? Why?”

“I cannot conceive of why anyone would want Angela dead. And I find it unlikely that I would not know if someone in my pack had killed her. That has… always been my struggle.”

“It’s not impossible to hide things from one’s Alpha,” Leah said quietly, so Bran didn’t have to.

Batiste’s eyes drifted towards the picture above his mantelpiece, even though it was currently showing the side with the map. “And Greg and Kirk?”

“We had a troubling experience in the creek Greg died in.” Bran elaborated on this tonelessly, as if there hadn’t been a brief moment when he, or she, had feared for Leah’s life.

Batiste’s expression grew wide-eyed with skepticism and concern. “Beth called me. About the ghost in her house, too. Do you think it could be related? Her mother died in that house.” He drew in a breath and let it out. “But many people have probably died in that house, including Spencer Green, whose son sold it to me. He was an unpleasant man. I could picture him tormenting someone from the afterlife.”

It was looking increasingly likely that they would need someone who could communicate with ghosts to solve this particular issue. But if Bran did call Mercedes to help, Leah would pack up and leave, she really and truly would. Emotional toil aside of watching her husband interact with her, Leah couldn’t trust herself.

She’d seen Mercedes once since Bran had invited her to leave Aspen Creek, and it had been the night of a full moon hunt, perhaps ten years after she had left. Leah had caught wind of a familiar scent and found herself hunting her through the forest like she had once hunted her through the town on foot. If Bran’s son hadn’t put an end to it, God only knew what Leah would have done. Bran had been furious enough as it was. They’d had an enormous argument after they’d Changed and everyone had fled the house. She thought Bran had been surprised at how vehemently Leah had still hated Mercedes, had accused of her holding an ‘irrational grudge’.

Leah wondered, now, how Bran would feel if they had someone like Casper in their town, but not in their pack. Free to ignore his edicts and charm his way into Leah’s good graces, pulling vindictive pranks, sneaking into people’s houses. She rather thought Bran might hold an ‘irrational grudge’ about that.

That was comforting.

“I would say that I think you’re heading in a wrong direction,” Batiste said, affably enough, “however it’s not as if I had come up with something better. Perhaps it would be useful if you talked to Arnold.”

“One final thing,” Bran said, remembering. He tapped the other man in the picture. “Who is this?”

“Ah, that’s Michel. Arnold’s younger brother. He used to visit us occasionally. He’s in his eighties now.” Batiste winced. “From what I gather, he’s not long for this world.”

*

Since Bran was still unsure of Arnold’s trustworthiness – he had been with the pack the through all the disappearances, after all – Leah was tasked with bringing up the subject of Beth’s mom.

“You’re the only one who can. What does Bryn care about Beth’s dead mother,” Bran said, as he drove them back to Arnold’s house. “I, meanwhile, need to find some way to deal with these ghosts.”

Leah had a thought about this. “Maybe you could do one of those video calls with her,” she suggested, managing to get the words out without any hint of vitriol.

The light that bloomed across Bran’s face was almost warming. “What a clever idea. I wonder if that would work?” He touched his fingers to his lips. “The only issue is that Beth’s house has no phone signal. And the ghost in the creek is under water. We presume, at least. I could certainly try it with the creek, however.” 

Leah wasn’t happy with the idea of Bran going to the creek on his own but equally she didn’t want to – and yet conversely also very much did want to – listen to him on the phone to Mercedes. She squirmed uncomfortably, at war with herself.

Bran, naturally, said nothing – his default response when Leah’s least favorite person was brought up.

“If you do it, will you go with Batiste?” she managed, eventually deciding her heart couldn’t take the phone conversation but neither could she bear the thought of him being dragged under water by a spirit he couldn’t see.

“Good girl,” Bran said, smiling.

“Don’t patronize me,” she replied tartly, which promptly put an end to that conversation.

*

Leah knew that Arnold sometimes used the small office on the second floor when he worked from home. It was little more than a desk with a computer, though it did have a nice view of his very overgrown garden.

When Bran dropped her off, she went upstairs with a mug of coffee and a slice of cake and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” he said. Arnold was half-turned and already smiling when she stuck her head around the door. On his computer screen was a spreadsheet full of numbers and colors that he did nothing to minimize when he saw her looking. He didn’t need to. He was an accountant which these days seemed to involve computer software more than it did calculators and those adding machines. She hadn’t the faintest idea of what the spreadsheet meant. Her recent failure to keep up with the pack investments told her it was something she would do well to stay away from.

His eyes honed in on the cake with laser focus. “Is that for me?”

 _No_ , _I’m going to eat it in front of you,_ Leah thought, relishing the sarcasm she couldn’t use out loud. “Yes,” was what she actually said, proffering these items to him with a big smile. 

“Thank you very much. Is this homemade?”

“It is indeed, however Beth made it.”

Arnold put an enormous forkful in his mouth and nodded. “She makes great cakes,” he said, with no a little pride for his pack-mate.

Leah waited a moment for him to clear his mouth, trying to look casual as she leaned against the wall. “Beth told me a little about her mom. I didn’t realize she was part of the pack. Or that she had been married to Batiste.”

Arnold pulled a face. He turned his face away from her to take a sip of his coffee. “Yeah. She was.”

“That didn’t sound positive.”

He seemed to mull this over, taking another bite of cake. “I suppose you’re supposed to be getting to know us as much as we you. Michaela was a pain in the ass, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

“How so?”

“She was kind of a narcissist.”

Leah had only the vaguest ideas of what that meant and her expression clearly said so because Arnold put the plate down with a sense that he was about to impart difficult information and he needed his hands free to do it. “She… was a master at manipulation. There was always something wrong, something had happened to her, that she used to make you feel bad for her. Or guilty. And stuff _constantly_ went wrong and because she was his wife we had to just drop everything for her. Come to her rescue. Bail her out. It was exhausting. And expensive.” He took a deep breath, and it was shaky, like he was reliving something he would rather not think of again. “She wasn’t one of us. She didn’t _want_ to be one of us and yet somehow it was something _we_ should feel bad about. But it was clear if she had been a werewolf, she would have been the best one there could be. Do you see?”

Leah nodded. He was certainly painting a good – if unpleasant - picture of the woman.

Arnold continued, as if he couldn’t help himself. “The worst thing was, at the time you didn’t know you were being manipulated in this way. It was this long-running, bad energy in the pack that only once Batiste and she separated that we noticed. Honestly, the day she moved out, it was like the air suddenly cleared and everyone could breathe again.”

“She sounds dreadful.” Leah wondered how such a woman could have produced a daughter like Beth. Or if Beth’s way was _because_ of how her mother had been. Like she was the absolute opposite. She thought of Beth’s proud little smile as she looked at her mother’s photograph and could only imagine she hadn’t been old enough to recognize these behaviors in her mom. “She must have caused a lot of damage to people’s relationships in the pack,” she said leadingly.

“Thankfully, I think we all survived reasonably intact. Though,” Arnold smirked, “I did do some psych courses on personality disorders, afterwards. I’m not keen to repeat the same mistakes.”

Leah supposed that meant Arnold was constantly assessing her for any of these narcissistic traits. It made her want to do her own research. “I can imagine. Is… is Beth…. I don’t mean to cast aspersions, but given the situation I did wonder… she’s not Batiste’s daughter, is she?”

Arnold’s mouth firmed into a tight, white line. “No. But Michaela told everyone she was. I mean, we all knew they occasionally still hooked up, so it seemed plausible,” he glanced at Leah apologetically, as if casual sex was inappropriate for her delicate ears. 

This was news. Obviously. “My goodness,” she said, genuinely shocked. 

“She had even Batiste fooled. Or,” Arnold admitted, attempting to be fair, “Batiste tried to be a gentleman about it and let her think she’d fooled him.”

“How did you find out otherwise?”

“It was Greg, actually. You know there are those DNA ancestry things you can buy? He got Beth to spit in a test tube or something, they were doing some Christmas present for Batiste, and she was totally baffled when a bunch of cousins turned up on a database who weren’t remotely related to her mom or even Batiste. So she did a paternity test and discovered Batiste wasn’t even her father. She was devastated.”

Leah’s heart squeezed. “Oh, God, poor girl.”

“I think Batiste knew, in his heart of hearts.” He sighed. “Greg felt badly about the whole thing, wished he’d never done it.”

“I can imagine. I guess it was recent, then? After Batiste Changed her?”

Arnold nodded. “Yup.” He picked up his fork once more. “But it was after her Mom had died. So with one fell swoop, she lost all the family she had known.”

*

When she felt she had extracted all she could from Arnold without looking grotesquely interested, she called Bran from the front drive. The phone line was engaged which – she assumed – meant he was speaking to Mercedes. She ground her teeth, texted him the salient details, and then called Charles. She skipped over the usual greetings and got to the point. “When an Alpha submits a formal request to Change someone, doesn’t he have to tick a box to say whether or not he’s related to them?”

“Yes.”

“What did Batiste put on his submission for Beth?” She shook her head, realizing that Charles might not be as familiar with the Foxton Lake pack. “She’s one of their younger members. She was only Changed a few years ago.”

“I know. He said he wasn’t related to her – otherwise I would have added it to the profile I gave Da. Why?”

“Her mother told everyone he was Beth’s father, including Beth. I was just trying to work out if Batiste knew he wasn’t. It seems like he did but didn’t say anything.” But had chosen not to continue this lie with the Marrok. At least he was honest in that.

Charles grunted. “So she grew up thinking she was the Alpha’s daughter?”

“Pretty much.”

“Unfortunate.”

After finding out what was going on with her chest freezer – Eric had fixed it, it was no longer making a noise, everyone was a winner – Leah hung up and went to investigate the topiary that edged Arnold’s front yard. They obviously put significantly more effort into the appearance of the front yard than the back but the end of the short hedge appeared to failing, the leaves going brown. Maybe a problem with the sprinklers, she thought, crouching down to take a closer look. 

Leah’s cell phone rung as she was digging around, looking for the sprinkler tube, and she answered it without looking, thinking it would be Bran or perhaps Charles. Instead it was Juste.

“The Marrok was unable to take my call and I understand you are investigating with him, my lady,” said the Frenchman.

Leah beamed and stood, brushing her soiled hand on her thigh. “I am. How nice to hear from you,” she said, genuinely delighted. She climbed over the topiary and went to stand in the road again, just far away from the house that she couldn’t be heard even by someone why was really trying. “Are you still in Idaho?”

“I am indeed. Mr. Digby has been kind enough to suggest I stay another night and partake in a run.”

 _Mr. Digby._ Leah rolled her eyes so hard she could imagine them touching her brain. “I hope he has been hosting you well.”

“Indeed he has. He wished me to convey his best wishes to you and the Marrok.”

“I shall convey this to Bran as soon as I see him.” And watch Bran roll his eyes, too. “What news do you have for me, Juste?”

In amongst the overly formal language and use of precise French-to-English translations Juste described the ‘delightful’ Miss May who was initially very nervous of his presence, thinking the Marrok had sent someone to punish her. Juste, well briefed by Charles, reassured her otherwise and in a way that he was apparently best suited for, delicately asked her a few questions about Batiste’s pack which in no way suggested anyone was at fault but equally implied there were deep concerns about mistreatment.

In short – May née April had been mercilessly bullied by her then Alpha’s wife. And this bullying had included getting May fired from her job, spreading unpleasant rumors about her personal proclivities and – she was convinced – stealing her credit cards and destroying her credit.

“Those are some… strong accusations. Did she tell Batiste?”

“Apparently so. She said it was one of the reasons that they separated as she was manifestly unsuitable as an Alpha’s wife. But she said after that the abuse still continued, but Miss May could never prove it was her.”

Having had some personal experience of this, albeit on a much smaller scale, Leah frowned. “I see.”

“She said in her Alpha’s defense he did try to get to the bottom of it but, obviously, once they were divorced Mr. Batiste didn’t technically have authority over her. Miss May said the final straw was when he invited this woman back into the pack as a housekeeper, I believe?”

“That’s correct.”

“A strange choice. But I suppose one can make terrible decisions for love.”

Leah lifted her eyebrows at Juste’s summary. He seemed to be speaking from personal familiarity. She wondered what poor decisions Juste might have made for love and whether it had been ‘love’ that had Batiste inviting Michaela back. Arnold had mentioned they had still been ‘hooking up’, as the expression went. 

“So, I suppose, when she was afraid of the possible retribution from the Marrok for her killing of the kidnapper, she chose to seek comfort from her first Alpha rather than Batiste and the eagle eyes of his ex-wife.”

“A neat summation, my lady.”

Leah nearly snorted. “Juste, could you do me one more favor? Could you ask _Miss May_ about another member of the pack? Angela, was her name. Find out for me if she was also bullied by the Alpha’s wife.”

“I shall do so immediately. If I might say, she seems to be particularly vindictive for just a human.”

“Mmm,” Leah said, wondering precisely how vindictive Beth’s mother could be. “Juste?”

“My lady?”

“Ask Miss May if she thinks Michaela was capable of murder.”

*

Leah tried Bran twice more, both times it went to voicemail which could mean he was still on a phone call or his cell phone was turned off. A nugget of worry formed in her stomach. She called the the number Batiste had given her for his office line to see if Batiste had indeed gone with Bran as she had suggested or perhaps to see if they had both returned. She was surprised when Beth picked up the phone.

“Hi!” Leah said, stumbling with the unexpectedness. “It’s me.”

“Leanne? Why are you calling Batiste’s private line?”

“Um. I’m looking for my husband. He’s not answering his cell phone.” This was technically true. Then, because she was the Marrok’s mate and she didn’t like Beth’s tone, she asked, “Why wouldn’t I be allowed to call Batiste?”

“Oh. No reason,” Beth said vaguely. “Just… it was surprising. He doesn’t give out this phone number. He’s not here. Bryn, I mean.”

“Maybe he’s gone somewhere with Batiste?”

“Maybe.” Beth seemed unwilling to confirm whether or not her Alpha was at home. “You weren’t here today?”

Leah became annoyed, feeling as if she was being interrogated. “Not for long. I guess I’ll keep trying his cell phone.”

She hung up.

“Everything all right?”

She turned to see Arnold standing in the open front door, frowning in confusion.

“I can’t get hold of Bryn,” she said.

“Since he dropped you off after lunch?” Arnold looked at his watch and smiled, as if she was overreacting. “It’s been four hours, Leanne. I mean, I know you’ve not been married long but I think you’ll survive.”

Leah pulled a face. Naturally she couldn’t explain.

“Bryn mentioned that you like to run. On two feet,” he added. “I’ve got a good running route if you’re interested? Might distract you from your pining.”

She would have been irritated had it not sounded like such a good idea. “You’re on. I hope you run fast.”

Arnold’s smile looked positively feral. “I guess you’ll find out.”

*

Leah ran alone, every day, which meant her level of competitiveness was usually only against herself. She typically used the time to think, finding the repetitive motions of her feet hitting the familiar and well trodden path of her normal running route both soothing and mind-numbing.

Running with another werewolf, and a man at that, was something else entirely. There was no time to think. There was barely time to breathe.

By the time they returned to the house and slowed to standing, they were both shattered but pride had them trying to pretend otherwise. She knew she was red-faced and sweating, very much not in her best looks. Arnold looked like he was sunburnt. There was a large V of sweat from his neckline to the middle of his chest.

“Good run,” he wheezed, hands on his hand and breathing deeply.

“Excellent,” she responded, similarly breathless, not entirely certain she could walk the two steps up to the front door. The stairs up to her room were absolutely out of the question.

She eyed the suddenly very soft looking front lawn.

“Your truck’s here. Don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Arnold pointed out, flopping his hand in a half-hearted gesture.

Leah hadn’t. She went to touch the hood, ostensibly to see if the engine was still warm but mostly because she wanted to lean against something. It was hot. Bran hadn’t been back very long.

She pushed herself off. “All right,” she said firmly. She made for the front door.

“Please, allow me,” Arnold offered, nipping in front of her to push open the door, walking as if his limbs weren’t quite attached to his body any more.

She snickered.

Inside, they both stared at the base of the stairs resentfully. If she had been home, she would probably have showered in the downstairs bath. She didn’t have the option of that here – there was only a pokey little toilet under the stairs. 

“After you,” Arnold said.

There wasn’t a chance she was going to let Arnold see how much her legs were shaking or the sweat patch she knew was down the seat of her pants. “No, no, please, after _you_.”

Bran came to stand at the top of the stairs. “Ah,” was all he said after he’d had a good look. He grinned and promptly went back to their room.

Leah noticed that he was wearing Charles’s sweats again which presumably meant he’d taken a swim. She scowled, suddenly finding the energy to march up the stairs.

In their bedroom, Leah looked longingly at the bed and whined.

Bran patted the mattress beside him, invitingly. He smiled sweetly. “Just lie down.”

“I can’t. I’m all sweaty,” she whined.

“Then take off your clothes.”

She heard Arnold go straight into the bathroom. “ _Ugh_.” She began peeling the layers of clothes from her body, starting with the sodden T-shirt – which was Bran’s - then the vest underneath. She rolled the spandex running pants down to her ankles when she realized she hadn’t taken her sneakers off. She swayed dangerously.

Bran got up from the bed to help her, huffing with laughter. “What did you _do_?” He held her arms whilst she toed off her shoes, leaning heavily against him.

“It— got _competitive_.”

“Do you remember when we used to run together?”

She groaned. “Yes. Just like that.”

“Mmm.”

She kicked her pants off, against the wall. Bran unclipped her sports bra ‘helpfully’. “Not a chance,” she told him, firmly, as he gathered her close, her bare skin rubbing against the soft, well-worn sweatshirt he was wearing. 

Bran was laughing silently at her. He put her arms over his shoulders. “I like when you’re all… floppy like this.”

She gave up and just let him hold her entire weight. “You didn’t answer my phone calls. Batiste has been very circumspect with his information. I thought maybe we were mistaken in him.” She couldn’t say she had been _worried_ for Bran. Batiste was nothing in the face of the power she knew her husband contained.

“I know. He admitted most of it to me on the drive up to the creek. He’s just a proud and private man and has had a long time to reflect on his mistakes.” Bran licked her cheek, which would have been normal had he been a wolf. Sometimes he forgot. Sometimes she licked him back. “I spoke to Juste. Yes, Angela was tormented in much the same way as May was, however May felt Angela gave as good as she got. And Miss May thought Michaela was more than capable of killing. She only had doubts if she was capable of killing a werewolf.”

They heard the shower turn off. Longingly, Leah imagined the water sloughing the salty sweat from her body, rinsing her hair, heat battering her aching muscles.

Bran’s tongue delved into the crevices of her collarbone. He had no such concerns over her cleanliness. “Would you like me to carry you into the shower?”

“No.” She attempted to wriggle out of his arms. “You’ll just bend me over the bath or something and have your way with me and I wouldn’t be able to defend myself.”

Bran laughed, shaking her with his rumbles of humor. “I would never. Not if you weren’t able to defend yourself.” He grabbed hold of her behind and squeezed. “Probably,” he added, after consideration. “Go shower. We’ll talk. The ghost in the water was Greg. He was murdered.”

*

In the shower, Leah thought of what Bran had said about why people killed. Money, love and hate. A simple formula. 

Michaela had run off at least one female from the pack. Possibly even turned Sven back to lone wolf life. Could she have killed Angela? Leah didn’t think it was so big a leap that if Batiste’s interest in Angela had become public knowledge, the obvious jealousy his ex-wife displayed for the females in the pack could well have led to her turning to something more violent than mere bullying. She was also in a position to know that Angela was planning on leaving _and_ she wasn’t part of the pack. If she killed someone, Batiste might not have known. 

But that was all supposition.

 _Greg_ was murdered.

She toweled off and dressed in the bathroom into a loose, knitted dress, one which she knew Bran would like because it was green, his favorite color. Gratifyingly, his eyes lit up in appreciation when she returned. “This is nice,” he said, touching the hem. He slid his hand immediately up her thigh. “And so accessible…”

Leah slapped his hand away, not without regret. “Greg. _Murder_ ,” she reminded him, climbing onto the bed and crossing her legs, facing him. The exercise had done wonders for her. She felt loose and happy, despite the conversational topic.

Bran sat in front of her, mirroring her pose. “Keep in mind, this wasn’t a particularly coherent conversation, more of an observation of actions - he didn’t see who it was and neither did we. It looked like he was hit on the head and pushed into the creek.”

“Ugh,” Leah said, disappointed.

“No. We know two things. One, that it was a werewolf that did it. No one else would have had the strength to incapacitate him.”

Michaela being long dead by this point, Leah assumed it would have had to have been. “And two?”

“Two, he wasn’t killed on a Monday. Which we know because when Mercy described what he was wearing, Batiste realized ghost Greg was wearing the T-shirt part of his uniform and he only worked Tuesdays and Wednesday nights. Greg didn’t turn up to either, of course, which puts his death between Monday and Tuesday before his shift started at 8pm.”

She blinked. “And that’s relevant…?”

“Because the ‘alibis’ Batiste had gathered were for Monday. We have all of Tuesday to play with now.”

Leah’s mouth formed an ‘o’ of understanding. It was often difficult to pin-point accurately the time of death for a werewolf. They were hard to kill and Greg’s head-wound might have started to heal before he had drowned, making it look like drowning – ergo, accident or suicide – was the main cause of death. “So he’ll have to get new alibis.”

“Yes. We discussed it. He’s going to interview everyone tomorrow.”

“I’ve wondered, by the way, why Greg was out there. He lived with Batiste, didn’t he?”

“He did.” Bran shrugged, unconcerned. “But apparently the creek walk was one of his favorites and he often did it.”

She nodded. “So it worked then? The video call?” It had been her idea and Leah wanted credit.

“It did. It was – new information for her as well.” Bran cupped her cheeks, kissed her quickly, clearly trying to distract her. “It was an extremely smart idea. Mercy thinks if a video call worked than a video might work as well.”

Leah was torn between being proud of herself and annoyed that he kept saying _her_ name, which was petty. But she was petty. She pouted. “You want to go out to Beth’s house.”

“I do.”

“She works Wednesdays through to Fridays. We could go tomorrow,” Leah said, as Beth’s schedule had been an active part of her life in the last week or so. “The house should be empty.”

“Perfect,” Bran said, beaming. He rubbed her legs. “I feel like we’re getting close, don’t you?”

*

Leah had a bad night. She woke several times from nightmares that she couldn’t remember and, in close quarters as they were, woke Bran with her. Bran, who became increasingly tired and grumpy as she did.

She was also hot.

“Get off me,” she complained at one point, shoving at him.

“I literally have no where to go,” Bran replied, waving his arm off the side of the bed to demonstrate.

They wriggled until Leah decided she would be better sleeping with her head at the other end of the bed. “So I can’t feel you _breathe_ ,” she hissed at him.

“Fine by me,” the Marrok of the wolves hissed back.

An hour or so later, she came back to the head of the bed, tired of staring at his meticulously groomed feet and no closer to falling asleep. “How close did you get to drowning?” she asked, knowing full well he was awake.

He was head first into his pillow. “Not that close.”

“But you did.”

“I plead the fifth.”

She sighed. “What else did you talk to Mercedes about?”

“Stop trying to start a fight,” Bran told his pillow, and her, firmly. “I’ll not have it, Leah.”

Leah mouthed ‘I’ll not have it, Leah’ to the ceiling mockingly and then folded her hands on her stomach and tried to work out why she was so restless. Something was bothering her subconsciously, the only possible reason for this insomnia. The Mercedes thing was… well, it was what it was and it had been the same since Mercedes was fourteen or fifteen, when she became a young woman in every werewolf man’s mind, including her husband’s, and stopped being an annoying child. It wasn’t new. It bothered her, it probably always would, but it wasn’t new. She no longer lost sleep over it.

She tapped her fingers on her stomach, going through what they had learned today that was factual.

Greg had been killed by a werewolf. What did she know about Greg? He had been the oldest of the pack, older than Batiste, even. Less dominant than Arnold and Casper. Worked part time as a security guard. Beth had described him a ‘gentlemanly’. And Greg had been the one to discover that Beth wasn’t Batiste’s daughter. Something that had devastated Beth.

Did _Beth_ wish Greg ill for it?

Leah squirmed uncomfortably. She couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see sweet, lonely Beth – stuck out in her mother’s house – killing someone. Couldn’t see Beth _hating_ someone enough to do that.

Could she? 

Leah was beginning to feel too stupid for this case. Probably, Anna would have solved it by now. Maybe Bran already knew and was just waiting for the time to reveal it.

Maybe she needed to spend more time with other members of the pack. 

She knew nothing about Kirk, too. What about Kirk?

She turned her head to look at Bran, not surprised to see his eyes were half-open and he was blinking somnolently at her. “What is it?” he asked.

“Kirk,” she said, impatiently. “We know nothing about Kirk.”

Bran rubbed his cheek against his pillow. “His time of death was unequivocal. He also died at work and whilst he was found dead, and there were no witnesses, the farm manager didn’t think it suspicious.”

This was all information they had gone through before. “So the only two without alibis for _his_ death are Arnold and Rolf. But, I mean, I don’t know anything _about_ him. Who was he? Was he well liked?”

Bran exhaled. “He was Changed in the 1970s – a lone wolf, one who knew enough to at least see him through it. He was with two packs before he joined Batiste’s pack in 2012.” This, too, was information Charles had given them. Leah wrinkled her nose. “Casper seemed to think he was okay. Arnold was less keen.”

She perked up. “How so?”

“He implied that Kirk was not very stable. He moved jobs frequently – I took from this that he was regularly let go. He had a short attention span. Arnold actually said he wasn’t surprised he ‘got himself killed’ because he probably wasn’t paying attention to any safety instructions.”

Stability was important in a pack, of course. “I wonder if he was in financial difficulties.” Most packs paid a tithe to the Alpha - money which Arnold would manage. So he would know.

“Presumably, if he couldn’t hold down a job. Charles says this pack has a very healthy bank account, however. Batiste’s work is fairly lucrative and of course he’s been careful with his family money. He has a lot of land that he rents out to farmers in the area. Arnold makes sensible investments. Most of the pack have relatively stable jobs.”

She flipped the pillow to the cooler side and rolled onto her front. Was there a money angle? For years after divorcing Michaela, Batiste had financially supported her. Based on what Arnold had said, Leah bet many of the pack resented that. Using pack money for a woman most of them loathed. It would have rankled. The only consolation would have been that when Beth was born, she had been presumed to be the Alpha’s child and exceptions would have been made then. 

But she wasn’t the Alpha’s child. Leah had been born to a wealthy family. She had been raised accordingly – with all the prospects the daughter of such a family would have. A marriage to a similarly wealthy man, a comfortable future.

“Do you think Beth had expectations? As Batiste’s daughter?”

“He seems to still take care of her, regardless.”

Leah wasn’t so sure about that. She thought of the wiring in the house. The outdated appliances. The power cuts and the fact that the phone line didn’t work. She had a part time, low paying job at a local school and, like her mother, cleaned for Batiste. The house would be worth something but she seemed reluctant to part with it and yet didn’t have the income to keep it up to date.

She frowned.

After a moment, Bran reached over and rubbed his finger over the lines in her forehead. “We have a big day tomorrow ghost hunting,” he reminded her.

“I know, I know.” She closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep.

*

Bran whistled as they drew up to the house. “Impressive.”

“It lives up to the haunted house vibe, too,” Leah grumbled, climbing out of the truck.

Together, they walked the perimeter of the house, an opportunity Leah hadn’t had the last time she had visited. With more of a structural eye, Bran checked out the brick-work, watching some crumble on the ground, tugged at the rotting woodwork around the windows and generally frowned at the state of disrepair. “It’s getting to the point where it might become irreparable,” he said sadly.

“Half the house is boarded up inside,” she said. She pointed at a few rooms, all of which had broken windows, covered in plastic. “This part, I think.”

Bran took out his cell phone and slowly did a lap of the house, videoing it. Keeping out of the way, Leah went to look in the few small outbuildings she’d seen – nothing more than dilapidated sheds – and tested the branches of the scraggy apple trees. There was an empty bird feeder hanging from one and a clearly homemade bird house on another. One tree was significantly healthier than the other, with the apple buds further along.

“I’m done with the outside,” Bran called from the front door.

Leah took the key from under the stone tortoise where she had seen Beth hide it. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to break in, of course, but this way was less obvious. She let Bran in and gave him the same introduction Beth had done. “Those red stickers mean the sockets or switches don’t work.”

He nodded and this time did a sweep with his cell phone first.

Together, they wandered from room to room on the first floor before Leah took him upstairs. She pointed to the plastic sheeting. “You can see why ‘the wind’ is an easy answer.”

“Yes. This place reeks of death, however,” her husband said cheerfully.

Leah paused. “Same as the creek?”

He was pleased. “Exactly.”

She showed him the room she had stayed in, pointed out every drawer, every door and every item that had ‘moved’ in the night. During the day it seemed innocuous. The room looked charming and peaceful. “I had dreadful nightmares,” she murmured as she looked at the bed.

“Do you remember what of?”

“Drowning. Death. You died in one,” she said. She shuddered.

Bran gave her a sympathetic smile. She wondered if he ever had nightmares where she died.

Down the hallway, a door slammed. They hadn’t left any of them open.

“Creepy,” Bran whispered, happily.

Bran set up his cell phone in the hallway, propped against a wall on some books so he could get a good angle whilst he recorded. Then, Leah’s cell phone out now, they pushed open the door to Beth’s room.

“Jesus,” Leah whispered.

It was clearly the master suite of the house, bigger than the room Leah had stayed in. But it was a mess. Clothes everywhere, books on the floor, drawers and chairs upended, the comforter a crumpled heap against one wall. It looked like the room had been ransacked by burglars. Or if a ghost had a temper tantrum.

Leah videoed the room carefully. “Is there anything we should say?” she whispered, conscious that her husband would be sharing this video footage with Mercedes. She didn’t want to sound stupid.

“Not really but I like to add some theatre to the experience. _Reveal yourself_ ,” Bran intoned, using his Alpha voice whilst leaning casually against the door jamb.

Nothing happened but that was apparently what it had looked like when they had done the video call at the creek. At least before Bran had gone into the water to invite the poltergeist’s attention.

“She could just be dreadfully untidy,” Leah said thoughtfully. The rest of the house wasn’t, of course.

“If she is, I have concerns about her mental health,” Bran murmured, looking at the stuffing that had come out of a cushion.

“I don’t know, it reminds me of how Charles used to destroy his bedroom as a teenager. When you made him stay at the house with me whilst you were away,” Leah said thoughtfully, reviewing the room with a different context. “She could have just let her wolf out to play.”

Bran looked at her askance. “Charles did this?”

“Frequently. Thankfully, things were a little more basic back then,” she said. There hadn’t been much in the way of decorative soft furnishings for her step-son to destroy, though she’d had to laboriously, and repeatedly, mend his bed-sheets. 

“You never told me.”

“And how well do you think you would have taken my criticism of your little boy?”

“He wasn’t a little boy,” Bran grumbled.

Leah sighed. Since Kara, she’d had cause to occasionally revisit her treatment of her step-son when she had first met him. She wasn’t often one to regret her past actions but she could have done better. She could have done much better. “He was. He was a sad, lonely little boy.” Aware that Mercedes would be getting an earful of their private history, and annoyed about it, Leah stopped recording.

Bran, lost in thought, stared into Beth’s bedroom a little more. Then he snapped himself out of it. “Let’s look into the closed off part of the house.”

There was nothing much to say about the rooms that Beth had blocked off. They were empty of furniture and cold, with dangerously loose floorboards and areas where it looked like someone had started some work – plastering over walls, retiling, even some sanding, for instance – and then stopped. There were bags and containers of building materials, even some rusting power tools, piled up in a corner.

“No dust, though,” Leah said, blowing on the top of an ornate mantelpiece in the biggest upstairs room. “She must still clean in here.” It smelled ever-so-slightly of bleach. Probably a defense against mold.

Whilst they were investigating the second upstairs bathroom – a virulent pink suite – they heard multiple doors open and slam close in the main part of the house. They froze, momentarily concerned that someone had come into the house, but the resounding silence put paid to that.

“Hopefully your phone caught that,” Leah whispered.

He agreed. “I should get the footage to Mercedes. See if she can see anything.”

They had noted where the signal had disappeared on their drive – two miles down the road – and Bran had coordinated with his favorite coyote to be ready and waiting. And no doubt very willing. “Do you want to come with me or stay here?” he asked, when they were outside. 

Again, Leah decided against listening to her husband’s no-doubt superior conversation with Mercedes. “I’ll stay. You’ll talk easier without me there.”

Wisely, Bran chose not to comment on this. He hopped in the truck, rolled down the window. “Might be an idea to open some windows. I think we can be reasonably certain she’s too young to have that keen a nose but you never know.”

Leah agreed. Bran had also been careful not to touch anything. _Her_ presence was at least recent enough to be explained.

On the spur of the moment, and no doubt paranoia-based, Leah leaned through the window and kissed him. She was pleasantly surprised by his enthusiastic response. Bran slid his tongue into her mouth and cupped the back of her head, pressing them tightly together. He smiled knowingly at her as they parted. “Daft,” he told her.

Leah stuck her tongue out at him, feeling liquidly relaxed now. Being _liked plenty_ by the Marrok was a significant improvement on her previous understanding, she decided.

She watched the truck drive off and then did as he suggested, opened the couple of windows that she could open without much force to give the house an airing. She also took a closer look at the photographs on the mantelpiece. In all the photos, Beth’s mom looked like every mother ought to – sweet and kind. An attractive woman. There was a passing resemblance between mother and daughter in the shape of the face but otherwise she had much darker hair than Beth and her eyes were a light blue. 

Leah had looked up narcissist on the internet and, if what Arnold and May had said was true, this innocent looking woman had been a master manipulator, capable of great emotional and mental harm.

Once again, Leah felt very sorry for Beth. She’d had a reasonably distant relationship with her own mother, a woman who’d had little to do with Leah’s actual raising until she was old enough to be brought out socially. But there had been affection there, she thought, and she remembered liking her, at least.

Bran returned forty-five minutes later, driving fast. “It’s Angela,” he confirmed through the open window, arm hanging loosely outside. His face was grim. “And she was murdered here.”

*

Mercedes had seen Angela running through the hall upstairs, to and from the direction of the bedrooms, through to the area that had been cordoned off.

“She looked distressed and was shouting, like she running away from someone. She apparently pauses at the top of the stairs, looks down, sees something that also scares her, and runs into here,” Bran said, carefully untacking the plastic sheeting and peeling it back again.

They retraced their steps into the first room.

“Presumably this was a bedroom,” Leah said. It was even bigger than Beth’s and was probably actually once the master suite. There was a smaller room attached to it – like a dressing room - and then the virulent pink bathroom suite.

Bran stood in front of the fireplace. It had been blocked off. Around the mantelpiece there were areas of obvious plastering. “The plasterwork here is odd, isn’t it? Why would you just patch this part?” He scratched at it with his nail.

“I just assumed it was amateur DIY, smoothing over imperfections in the wall. That they were going to re-decorate.” Most of the wallpaper had also been stripped. There were rolls of new wallpaper, still in its plastic wrapping, leaning against a corner, along with the paint. “There’s more of it in the bathroom.”

They looked at the bathroom. There were two plasterwork patches on the wall, directly opposite the door entrance. The door itself was off its hinges, leaning against one of the other walls of the smaller room.

“Best way for a human to kill a werewolf?” Bran asked, like this was a quiz he was expecting her to do well in.

“Silver bullets.”

He nodded to the patches. “What do you think? Can we scrape that off and Beth wouldn’t notice?”

“There’s a bag of plaster out there.” And plastering tools. “We could mix it up and replace it? It might dry before she thinks of coming in here to check.”

They decided the safest option would be to tackle the plaster in the bathroom. If Beth stuck her head around the plastic suspiciously, the mantelpiece was most visible and would alert her to something being different.

Leah got to work whilst Bran went off to keep an eye on the road, in case Beth made an early return.

Because it had been an amateur job, and the wall itself was a little damp, the plaster came away from the wall quite easily in big chunks. It didn’t take too long before Leah was able to reveal a neat hole in the wall, recognizably bullet sized. She peered into one and then, with a sense of inevitability, placed her palm over the hole and drew it back. Sure enough, a circle of red appeared, the beginnings of silver poisoning.

Her husband reappeared over her shoulder moving silently and suddenly, making her jump. “Still in there?”

She nodded. “I could probably dig it out if you could find me a better tool.” She’d been using a stripping knife but the edge was too wide. “Maybe a kitchen knife?”

He disappeared again. She heard him running down the stairs. Funnily enough, there had been no banging of doors whilst she’d been working.

Bran returned with a selection of kitchen equipment. She picked up a skewer and wedged it into the hole, digging towards the edge, trying to get leverage. Patiently, Bran waited, making no attempt to take over from her or offer suggestions.

Slowly, she eased the bullet out. Bran caught it, pocketed it. “Plaster that up,” he ordered, “and let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, sir,” Leah said tartly, as if she didn’t take orders from him all the time.

*

Bran was in a hurry to get away, breathing an audible sigh of relief when they were back in the truck and he turned onto the highway.

“Something wrong? More than, you know.” She lowered her eyes to where the silver bullet was no doubt literally burning a hole in his pocket.

“I understand why you had such a bad night there. Ghost aside, that house is… saturated with unbearable negative emotions.” Bran gave himself a full body shake. “Decades of unhappiness.”

Naturally, Leah hadn’t felt that.

He cleared his throat. “I videoed more footage whilst you were working. Mercedes said she thought she glimpsed something outside but couldn’t be sure so I thought I’d make another pass of the house.”

 _Mercedes said_ , Leah thought, petulantly.

“I also went into Beth’s room.”

Leah groaned. And they’d been so careful. “Oh, Bran, why? Her _room_.”

Bran gave her a repressing look. “I know how to hide my scent. I was careful not to touch anything. However, you should know Beth wasn’t the only familiar scent I found in there.”

“Oh?”

“I smelled Casper. And Arnold.”

Leah’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she said, shortly. For a moment, she didn’t know what to think. Then, “Were they recent? And… on her bedding?” It was a little uncomfortable asking.

“I would certainly say they’ve both been there in the last week or two. And, yes, her bedding. Everywhere really. Strangely, I went around the rest of the house and couldn’t find anything else, though.” Bran glanced over at her quickly. “There are limited _other_ logical reasons beyond the obvious why a single, adult woman would have a man in her bedroom.” 

Leah tried to come up with a few, quickly. But he was right. “Both of them, though? And… both Batiste and even Beth have said that Arnold is involved with… other women. And – she _claimed_ that Casper was all but repulsive to her. Convincingly.” Leah told him the outline of what Beth had said to her. It wasn’t funny in the retelling and, as she told him, she realized the obvious. “She didn’t actually say ‘no’, did she?” she said, half to herself.

“She wove a truth in, too. To distract you.” Bran sounded almost admiring.

Leah felt stupid. She often did. _Bran_ would have noticed Beth hadn’t said no. If she wasn’t really trying, she took what people said at face value, forgetting that they could manipulate her as much as she was trying to manipulate them. It was a mistake she had often made with Anna. “And Arnold and his married women?”

“Could be true, as well. I mean – at this point, we’re not talking about a monogamous relationship, are we? And we’ve not heard this from the horse’s mouth, but second-hand.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t think…?”

“What?”

“ _At the same time?_ ”

Leah considered herself a woman of the world in many senses but probably not with regards to sex. She had been a subscriber to women’s magazines for all of her life which had in the last thirty to forty years certainly done its best to expand her mind on the subject of sex and all the ways a woman could enjoy it. 

But the thought that Beth – young, innocent Beth – was involved in a poly-amorous relationship with two men was… well. It was blowing her mind.

Smiling, Bran picked up her hand, brought it to his lips, and then held it, clasped between them. “So, it’s now looking likely that Angela was killed in the house by silver bullets, the human weapon of choice. I think we can assume Michaela did it. And perhaps Beth knows about it. She would have been, what, fourteen? Fifteen at the time. She may even have witnessed it.”

Leah swallowed and stared unhappily out of the window. She couldn’t express how much she didn’t want Beth to be involved. 

Bran continued, damning Beth further. “Mercedes says it’s likely the body is buried there. That, and the silver bullets in the walls, would be a good reason for Beth to never want to sell the house, at least. She couldn’t risk it.”

Unwillingly, Leah suggested a build on this unhappy theory. “Greg was the one who found out she wasn’t Batiste’s daughter. I think… I think if anyone wanted Greg to die, it might be her,” she said quietly. “He took away her financial security. Batiste would look out for her, like he would any member of the pack, but as his daughter she could have expected more. And I suppose she couldn’t blame her mother, since she was already dead.”

Bran squeezed her hand and then let go, moving to adjust the bullet in his pocket with a wince. “The spectral pattern would suggest the two murders are linked, even if it’s through a mother and a daughter. There’s enough bad energy in that house to travel with a person.”

Resolutely, Leah firmed her chin and nodded. “So we’re assuming that Sven just went lone wolf. Which makes sense. If it was too tough in the pack because of Michaela, why would he want to stick around? What about Kirk?”

Her husband shrugged placidly. “Could have just been an accident.”

“A very coincidentally timed one,” she pointed out. Bran didn’t believe in coincidences.

“True. Have you ever talked to Beth about Kirk?”

Leah shook her head, her ponytail bobbing behind her. “Not since she told me he had been killed in a farming accident.” She made a considering noise. “Arnold didn’t like him, you said.”

“Yes.” Bran tapped his free hand on the wheel. “Arnold thought he was a flake. And not stable enough for the pack.”

“You know, he said after Michaela he did some psych courses on personality disorders. That suggests he’s quite invested in ensuring anyone who joins the pack is as mentally stable as they can be. And,” she added, building on this, “when I asked Batiste about the protocols about the trial, _he_ said that they had changed the way they did things. That Arnold had changed things.”

Bran huffed out a laugh. “I suspect that means for the last week I’ve been specifically put through ‘trials’ that might draw out personality disorders. I sincerely hope I don’t get to see the results.”

Leah smirked. In a way, she would love to see how someone else had analyzed her husband. She would guess two millennia of orchestrating others to do his bidding resulted in a very particular type of personality. “So when did Arnold implement the changes? The most recent new joiners were Fergus, then Kirk, then Casper. I think we can assume that Casper, despite his lecherous— _seriously_ , Casper was _overtly_ flirting with me in front of her.” She threw up her hands despairingly. “Isn’t that peculiar?”

“Unless he was doing it to put everyone off the scent. Quite literally.”

“Ugh,” Leah said, feeling as if she had been manipulated from every angle. “If true, that’s _very_ insulting.”

“Oh, dear, what a shame,” Bran said, drily, flicking her leg in chastisement. “I think you were about to suggest that Arnold changed the way they brought people into the pack because he was disappointed in Kirk.” 

“Yes. And Kirk joined the pack in 2012. Let’s assume the next one was Fergus and he is certainly plenty stable so it seems to have been working out.”

“Agreed. Good job. Quite well balanced. Reasonably normal level of aggression with Rolf. Nothing to be worried about there.”

“Are we heading in the direction of suggesting Arnold killed off Kirk? Just because he might have been,” yuck, “sleeping with Beth? Whose mother killed Angela? We think?”

“Maybe we’re taking this too far,” Bran said, with a small smile.

Leah leaned forward so she could rest her forehead against the dashboard. Her brain felt tired. “I feel like we take one tiny step forward and two large steps back, every time.”

“Fun, isn’t it?”

*

On returning, Leah was not best pleased to discover from Fergus that she would be hosting another pack dinner at short notice, this time at Batiste’s house.

Fergus continued to look at them over the back of the couch, his video game paused. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. You know, I was hazed at college. It felt very similar to doing the pack trial here,” he said as an aside to Bran.

Bran was in absolute agreement. “Tell me about it.”

Leah muttered crossly to herself as she headed up to their room to change. She put on the skirt she had worn to their anniversary dinner, which felt like a million years ago, and then a white T-shirt. Then she thought about it. “What do you think the odds are that we’ll end up going on a run tonight?”

“Reasonably high.”

She swapped the light colored T-shirt and skirt for a pair of black jeans and a dark blue blouse. Then she folded up a second set of clothes. She did the same for Bran automatically, despite his belated protests that he was perfectly capable of packing a change of clothes for himself.

“Yes, but this way I get to choose what you wear,” Leah said, batting her eyelashes at him. Most of their lives together she had only been a passive observer of Bran’s carefully crafted ‘style’.

The corner of his mouth lifting, Bran cast an eye over what she had selected. “I see.” She had chosen the green T-shirt, which was rapidly becoming her favorite item of clothing on him, and one of his less shabby pairs of jeans. “Shall I put that on now, instead?”

“Well, that would be nice.”

Given the circumstances, Leah was half aware that indulging herself by watching her mate undress – deliberately slowly, she thought – and then put on an outfit she had selected was rather ridiculous. Inappropriate, even. Still, she did it. She enjoyed it. He presented himself for her approval and she unnecessarily smoothed the non-existent wrinkles over his chest, the toned definition of his upper arms.

Again, deliberately slowly, Bran backed her towards the dresser, resting his arms on either side of her, boxing her in with his hips. There was precisely one circumstance when Leah enjoyed being ‘trapped’ and this was it and it was only by him. She saw his nose flare ever so slightly, no doubt taking in the waves of desire she was pumping out. He controlled himself so much better than she – only letting her know he wanted her _when_ he wanted her to know. Leah had no such skillset. This disparity used to embarrass her; it always looked as if she wanted him more. It went hand in hand with her belief, erroneous though she now knew it was, that they were intimate because his monster needed him to be. She’d thought he only let himself want her when he needed her help to control that. Like an emergency switch.

That wasn’t true. Bran wanted her just as much as she wanted him. Leah’s skin prickled with anticipation and she tilted her face up, sunflower to the sun.

He nudged her nose with his, his mouth close but not close enough. She edged forward, intending to kiss him, but he moved and instead very gently kissed her cheek. Then, dragging his cheek against hers, he kissed her neck. Twice. As she shivered, she felt him breathe in deeply. “I did not have the slightest idea that this was what it was going to be like,” he said softly.

Having trouble with focusing, Leah swallowed twice before she answered. She moved her hips against his and he pinned her more firmly against the dresser. “What?”

“Being here with you.”

Bran certainly wasn’t alone in that. She felt like monumental things had shifted in their relationship. Like she had clarity for the first time. Balance, even. “What did you think?” she whispered, curious.

He chuckled against her skin. She felt the wet press of his tongue in an open-mouthed kiss. “I thought it would be… friendly.”

Leah smiled. She felt flush with warmth suddenly, almost more than the desire. “Friendly. Well, it’s certainly been that.”

“It certainly has.” She heard the smirk in his voice. He picked her up, carried her over to the bed and then kneeled over her. “We will be late,” he told her, firmly, undoing the buttons of her blouse, “and I will hear no complaints from you about it.”

Leah tugged up the green T-shirt, sighing a mental sigh about how much she loved his body. “I have no doubt it will be worth it.”

*

They drove Fergus to Batiste’s and Leah struck up a conversation with him about whether he was dating anyone. In Aspen Creek, involving herself in the personal lives of their wolves would be absolutely out of character for her. Her relationship with Bran was – and maybe she could use the past tense now – so challenging that she rarely liked to hear good stories. Even hearing about how much Peggy missed her partner when she was away had annoyed Leah.

But here, part of an ostensibly ‘happy’ couple, it seemed more normal to pry. She leaned over the back of the seat to interrogate him.

“I’ll have you know,” Fergus said, good-humoredly, “I am extremely popular with the ladies at work.”

“I can absolutely see that.”

“It’s the muscles.” Fergus demonstrated these for her once again, lifting his arms and posing.

Knowing him a little better now, Leah grinned. “Wow. I’m impressed.”

“It’s almost overwhelming, isn’t it?”

She giggled. “So, just playing the field, is that it?”

Fergus shook his head from side to side, pulling a face. “I was burnt pretty badly in my last pack.”

This, of course, she knew. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is.” He cleared his throat, as if uncomfortable with the tone of the conversation. Leah suspected that she would have had more luck if Bran hadn’t been in the car with them, even though he was doing his very best to be invisible.

Fergus changed the subject. “So, ah. What do you think? Of our pack?”

Bran answered, catching Fergus’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s some… odd dynamics.”

It was a gamble. Fergus had been with the pack for nearly five years. Long enough for ‘our pack’ to really mean something, for it to become family, however dysfunctional.

As usual, it was a gamble Bran had judged correctly. Fergus winced theatrically. “Yeah. I guess you know about Batiste’s crazy ex?”

Leah’s eyes widened. “And Beth _not_ being his daughter. And not to mention, well. Two werewolves _died_ in the last year. Like _mysteriously_. What did you make of that? Did you know Kirk well? And Greg,” she added, as if an afterthought.

“Greg, not so much. He was a pretty quiet guy. But Kirk.” Fergus whistled. “He was a piece of work.”

Leah almost grabbed Bran’s leg in excitement. “Oh?”

“I mean, I know you’ve had your problems with Casper but Kirk was seriously _aggressive_ when it came to women. He went after Bethy like she was chopped meat. Arnold and Casper properly had their hands full trying to control that situation. I don’t think Beth had much experience, if you get my meaning.”

“We do,” Bran said, darkly, as Leah pulled an appalled face. This really did just get better and better.

Fergus leaned forward. “And, obviously the thing with the DNA test happened and suddenly Kirk _lost interest_. Like, the next day. Gone.” He waved a hand in the air. “He was after her money.”

Leah felt her face fall and saw it mirrored in Fergus’s eyes. “Oh, no. Did she actually like him, do you know?”

“I don’t know. She was pretty subdued, afterwards. But that could have been because she had just discovered she was an orphan. Poor kid,” he said, sitting back in his seat. “She’s a nice little thing, generally. Really thoughtful. Tries to take care of Batiste, when he lets her.”

This was curious. “When he lets her?” Was it because he didn’t want her to behave like she was his daughter?

“I think he’s worried about history repeating itself. Beth can be… a little obsessive.”

“What do you mean?”

“She kind of gets… attached to people. There was this woman at her work, not so long ago. Beth talked about her non-stop for months. She was so beautiful, so clever, so funny and so on. And then she set her up with Arnold and it went badly wrong. Suddenly the woman was the _devil_. Beth _hated_ her. Same thing apparently happened with Greg. They were very close. She treated him kind of like an uncle and he really doted on her. Until. Well.”

“She just sounds young to me,” Leah said, slowly, though she had to admit it didn’t sound encouraging. Like Beth put people on wobbly pedestals that they couldn’t possibly stay up on.

Leah’s face being what it was, her reaction made Fergus hurry to reassure her. “Oh, she is that. And, I really don’t want to put you off. She _means_ well. It’s just… she’s started to talk about you a lot,” he said, gently, to Leah. “I think Batiste has already had a word with her and I know it’s something Arnold and Casper are aware of, too. It’s not bad. It’s just… I think it might be a little overwhelming if you don’t understand where she’s coming from.”

“Thank you for letting us know,” Bran said.

Leah turned back to face forwards again, uncomfortably lost in her own thoughts.

*

They arrived at Batiste’s house and walked into an angry tension, thick like soup. Rolf’s wife, Annalise, stood in the hall, rocking a tearful baby, looking nervous. As well she might. A houseful of angry werewolves was no place for a human and a vulnerable child.

Leah frowned at her. “Where’s Rolf? Should you be here?” If it came out a little abruptly, it was because she was concerned.

“He’s not going to be here until much later. My sister is coming to get me but she can’t leave work for another half an hour,” she whispered, casting a frightened look over her shoulder, down the tiled hall to the kitchen. 

Bran sighed and took his keys out from his pocket. “I’ll drive you home. Come with me.” He gave Leah a look. “I will be _right back_.” 

Typical Bran, she thought, rescuing a damsel in distress. “I shall try to keep out of it. Whatever it is,” she assured him.

Bran hustled the relieved mother and child from the house. In silent agreement, Leah and Fergus gave the back of the house a wide berth and eased their way into the living area instead. An extremely tense Lucius was sitting in an armchair, pretending to read a book. He didn’t obviously look up when they came in, as if he was deliberately keeping very still, but his eyes tracked them as they slid down onto the couch adjacent to him.

“What’s going on?” Fergus asked quietly.

Lucius cast a look to the open door. “Batiste suggested pizza. Beth went nuts. They’re in his office having it out.”

Given Leah had been expecting to prepare an elaborate meal for more than a dozen in yet another unfamiliar kitchen, she thought pizza sounded like a _great_ idea and was more than willing to throw money at the problem if it helped. “What’s so crazy about pizza?” Leah asked.

Fergus shrugged, as perplexed as she but Lucius pulled a face. “Beth doesn’t approve of junk food.”

“Oh.” Neither did Leah, really. There had been a period in the late Twentieth Century when a great deal of junk food did really taste as it was named. Bad quality meat and chemicals. In her experience, that quality had improved in tandem with social demands. She now thought there was a time and place for it and if meant she didn’t have to prepare a meal that was the right moment indeed.

Fergus flopped back on the couch. Pizza arguments clearly weren’t something to worry about. “Is anyone else here?”

“Yeah. Casper and Arnold are out back.” This was also said with heavy intonation and then with a significant look at Fergus, Lucius lifted his book to resume pretending to read.

Leah stood and went to look out of the window. Down by the lake, she could see two small figures grappling, one with recognizably blonde curls. As she watched, Casper body slammed Arnold into the ground. Hard. “Do they do that often?” she asked.

Fergus came to stand behind her. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

Lucius grunted. “Casper made a joke about Arnold’s harem. He totally lost his shit.”

“Ah,” Fergus said in understanding tones.

Fair enough. Leah had seen werewolves fight over lesser things. Tag and Devon had once fought over the turkey wishbone one Thanksgiving. 

Of course, Tag and Devon hadn’t been – possibly – sharing the same woman. Not that she would have put it past them. Or Bran, actually. There was a wild period in their shared past, after Bran had walked away from the Berserker, his mind and body once his again, when the three of them had roamed Europe as a group of carefree bachelors. Her husband was often nostalgic for that time. It was one of the periods of his history of which he was more than happy to tell tales.

Naturally, any tales of women he carefully edited around her. Leah had no qualms being jealous about dead women, either.

A door slammed in the hall – the office, by the nearness of it – and then another door soon followed. Leah watched as a familiar blonde haired woman marched across the back yard, over the low fence and down to the lake where Arnold and Casper were fighting it out. “Now, what does she think she’s doing?” Leah murmured. No sane woman would go _towards_ two werewolf men who were in the middle of a fight.

Lucius gave in and joined them, just as Batiste cleared his throat in the doorway. “Good afternoon, _Leanne_. Fergus. Lucius.”

The three of them turned, caught like naughty children with their fingers in the cookie jar.

Batiste merely gave them a small smile. Then he smiled more broadly at Leah. “You’re off the hook tonight, Leanne. I will be treating everyone to a pizza party.”

“Oh, that’s— I’m happy to cook?” Leah said, barely attempting to make this sound like it was something she actually wanted.

“No, indeed, it’s quite unfair to expect you to cater for us every night. Particularly _en masse_.” Particularly, she read between the lines, as she was the Marrok’s mate.

Leah gave him a toothy smile. “I’ll make a couple of salads, nevertheless.” 

Batiste was forced to be gracious. “I’m sure that will be much appreciated.”

*

Arnold stuck his head into the kitchen as she was putting together the third salad. Fergus was flicking through a TV magazine, occasionally commenting on its contents. “I’m on pizza collection duty. Leanne, do you want to come give me a hand?”

Leah froze, salad tongs in the bowl, paused in tossing the vegetables, cheese and leaves together. Flashes of everything she had learnt in the last few hours crossed her mind. Angela murdered in Beth’s house. Bran scenting Arnold in Beth’s bed. Beth being pursued by the disreputable Kirk. Arnold and _Kirk_.

Arnold raised his eyebrows, expectantly.

“Sure. Let me just wash,” she said, smiling broadly.

It would give her a chance to ask him some questions. Subtly, she reminded herself. She had to be subtle. Not her strongest skill, though she hadn’t done too badly on this trip.

Leah used the downstairs bath and took the moment of privacy to send Bran a message. Communication, as she had read many times, was very important in a successful relationship. _Getting the pizza with Arnold._ She had heard from arriving pack members that the traffic in town was terrible. She assumed Bran was caught up in that.

The journey to the pizza place, Leah mostly peppered with small talk. Was it a good pizza place? Did they often get pizza from there? How often did the pack meet together as a group?

Arnold answered all these questions evenly, if not happily, as if he was still trying to convince her that they were a happy-go-lucky pack with no disturbing dynamics whatsoever.

That being the case, Leah gave him a cheeky smile and said, “And what were you and Casper working out your differences over?”

Arnold grunted, mood dissipating. “He can be very inappropriate.”

“I know that!”

This made him bark out a laugh. “Yes, of course. Of course you do.” He sighed fulsomely. “I am sorry about that. I just don’t know what got into him. That’s not to say that you’re not—” Seeming to see that he’d walked himself into a ditch of his own digging, Arnold flailed a hand around helplessly. “Um. You’re great. Obviously. As Bryn, I’m sure, already knows.”

“I certainly like to think so.” She smiled, feeling rather as if her earlier concerns had been unfounded. Spatters of rain appeared on the windscreen and she leaned forward to look at the darkening sky. “Oh, dear.”

“Yes, it’s supposed to be torrential tonight.”

For some reason, Leah thought of the creek, flooding. She shivered.

“Cold?” Arnold turned up the heat, putting his hand in front of the vent. “We’ll be there in five minutes. They also give free garlic bread if you collect. That’s always the benefit of being on collection duty.” He smiled conspiratorially at her and she smiled back.

The pizza place was small, just enough for a couple of tables with plastic checked tablecloths and a window bar where customers could order a slice and watch the world go by. It smelled mouthwatering and she and Arnold sat at the window, eating their free garlic bread whilst the restaurant wrapped up their admittedly quite sizeable order. They’d probably made their sales targets for the week.

“Here,” Leah said, getting out her purse, when Arnold got up to pay.

“Absolutely not. You of all people have certainly earned this,” he said, shaking his hands at her. 

She hopped down off her stool and stood with her arms out as Arnold slid a dozen, huge pizza boxes into her arms and then picked up his own. There was an amusing juggling moment as they worked out how best to secure the pizzas, quickly, as the rain was really coming down. Leah’s hair was really plastered to her head by the time they were back in the car.

Arnold brushed a hand over his short hair and apologetically aimed the air vents in her direction. “Should have found you a waterproof,” he muttered.

Leah hadn’t paid much attention to the journey from the house but, perhaps it was the rain, it seemed to take longer and be more circuitous. Arnold drove fast, with the familiarity of the local and she settled back, listening to the fast swoosh of the windscreen wipers and the rain pelting against glass and metal. Judging from the landscape, she thought that they were getting nearer the house. They were passing through the edges of Taunton Forest and she turned to ask Arnold a question.

A flash of white ran into the road in front of them, lit up by the headlights – an amorphous, human-sized blob.

“Jesus!” Arnold shouted, swerving immediately to the left. Somewhat inevitably, they hit a wet patch and the car spun out of control. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Arnold expertly attempt to regain control but it wasn’t enough. They hit the barrier with a crumple of American engineering and Leah felt the swoop of her stomach as the car flipped.

*

There was always a stunned moment, after a car accident. Leah had been in a few. They were all survivable, for the most part, unless there were additional factors. Water, being one. Debris being another. She’d seen someone be decapitated by a tree branch once.

When she woke up, it took her a moment to adjust the searing pain that was a concussion. She started to draw on the pack bonds, just a little, just to kick-start the healing process. She wasn’t critically hurt. Everything in Arnold’s car had worked as it should. The seatbelts held. The airbags deployed. It was just that the car was upside down and crumpled around them. She could smell blood. Hers. Someone else’s. She could also hear water. Rain?

She checked Arnold. He didn’t look great; his face was awash with blood and he was still unconscious. Probably a nose bleed from the airbag. Maybe he’d hit his head harder.

Bracing one hand against the roof of the car, she fumbled to unlock her seatbelt. It gave way and gravity gave her a nice additional knock as she hit the ground. For a moment, she battled a wave of nausea and dizziness, then when she was certain she wasn’t about vomit down herself, she began the slow, tedious process of twisting herself the right way around so she could start kicking at the shattered window.

Finally, the window gave way enough for her to ease herself through, glass scraping through her jeans and sweater. To think, she thought, she’d been planning to wear a skirt that evening.

She landed on a patch of wet earth, rain pattering on her face, and gave herself a good few seconds to assess herself. Concussion – check. Definitely some kind of head wound, she could feel it throbbing and the tell-tale wetness of blood oozing down the back of her neck. Head wounds always bled a lot. Her neck was killing her. That would be the whiplash. And of course she was bruised across her chest from the seatbelt. Maybe a fractured collarbone.

All in all, though, it could have been much worse.

Leah pushed herself to standing, wobbled once, and made her way around the car, slipping and sliding in thick grooves of mud that had been ploughed through by the upturned car. She sucked in a breath when she saw that they had been unbelievably lucky. The car had landed only a few yards away from another creek, this one a good couple of feet wider than Sawmill, though certainly looked deep enough that had they flipped over in it, they could have easily drowned.

Belatedly, it occurred to her that Bran would no doubt have felt something through the pack bond. She patted her pockets, looking for her cell phone, then realized she wasn’t prioritizing right – _that would be the head wound, Leah_ – and went to check on Arnold. Bran would have to wait. He could tell she was alive. He could probably find her, too. She just had to wait.

Caring little of the mud, Leah eased down on her hands and knees on Arnold’s side and started to push out the shattered glass. Once she had cleared a good chunk of the window, Leah could see he was now awake, his head was moving as he dangled upside down. Unfortunately, he had clearly done something to his neck because he was wheezing, unable to speak.

“Stop trying to talk,” she ordered as he turned to look at her through one bleary eye. “Focus on breathing. Slow and even. Don’t panic; remember you’ll heal.”

She hit out the remainder of the glass and then paused. She didn’t think his shoulders were going to fit through it. The car had landed more awkwardly on his side, crumpling more, leaving him little space to maneuver. She wondered if she could flip it, without hurting him unnecessarily. She knew she _could_ flip it, it was just that doing so on her own might not be a smooth process.

No. It wouldn’t work. She leaned to the side, tried to catch Arnold’s frantically roving eye. “I think… I think you’re going to need to get over to my side—” The pale figure that popped up in the corner of her vision made her shriek. She clutched her hands to her chest, as her heart pounded double-time. She leaned against the truck. “ _Beth._ My God. You scared me.”

Beth smiled. It was so incongruous that Leah found herself smiling back. “You were in our house today,” she said, then. The smile vanished. “You lying _bitch_.”

And then she pulled out a gun from behind her back and shot Leah in the shoulder.

*

Again, Leah had been shot before. Many times.

She was furious, like she always was. At being shot – at the wave of scalding, distracting heat that bloomed on her shoulder. But mostly at not expecting it and falling on her ass with the impact. Beth fired again as Leah scuttled backwards but she wasn’t a good shot, even at such close range, and this time the bullet just grazed Leah’s face.

Still. Silver bullet to the head. Not something to sniff at. Clambering back around the car, Leah yanked hard on the pack bonds, no delicate trickle now but a river of power pouring into her, strengthening her muscles, healing the aches and pains as she prepared to fight. “Stop that at once,” Leah commanded, using Bran’s clout without hesitation now.

Over the base of the car, half crouched behind a wheel, Leah saw Beth falter, her face blanking with confusion. Leah couldn’t get a good look at the gun Beth was using but she thought it was a double-action revolver, the sort that was the sidearm of choice for the police before semiautomatics became the norm. So she had perhaps three or four bullets left. “Is that the gun that killed Angela?”

Beth was fighting against the Marrok’s power. “It was an _accident_ ,” she hissed, lifting the gun, holding it with both hands, shaking.

That was a ‘yes’, then. “Put it down,” Leah commanded.

She watched the physical battle flicker across Beth’s face but she managed to keep the gun raised. This told Leah something clearly: the wolf was nowhere near in control. It was the human who called the shots. Bran’s power would be of limited use to Leah. “Arnold’s hurt, Beth,” she said calmly, thinking to appeal to the affection she thought there was between them. “If you put the gun down, we can help him.”

The young woman sneered and she lowered her arms, Leah thought – briefly – because she was contemplating this suggestion but then Leah saw the jolt of a weapon being fired and heard the distinct sound of a bullet hitting flesh.

Arnold grunted and then, more worryingly, was silent.

“That’s a ‘no’, then,” Leah muttered. The bullet in her shoulder started to throb. If it hadn’t been silver she wouldn’t be feeling the affects, not with the strength she was taking from their people. It also hadn’t travelling all the way through, again, some additional bad luck.

Beth moved to the left. Leah did so as well, intending to keep the car between them as much as possible. The truth was, Leah was no good ‘talking’ someone down. She didn’t have it in her. She’d observed Bran and Charles do it, watched them manage to twist their own personal anger and frustration into expressions of paternal calm and kindness. When Leah tried, she knew she just looked how she felt. Pissed off.

“How was it an accident? How do you accidentally _shoot_ a werewolf several times?” she demanded.

“She _threatened_ Mom.” Beth made a dive to the left. Thankfully, she projected this move long before she actually did it and Leah was able to anticipate, skidding in the opposite direction, keeping low. She needed to ensure she stayed on the higher side of the upturned car; it would give her more cover.

Beyond Beth, Leah eyed the bank that they had crashed down over. She couldn’t climb it; she would be too exposed. Beth had presumably come from the house, which couldn’t have been more than five or six miles away, as the crow flies. They were just on the edge of Taunton Forest, where they had run the other night. At full speed, a werewolf could be here in ten minutes. Plus Changing time… twenty minutes. Half an hour, max.

Not that Leah expected to be rescued. It was just good to know when back-up might be arriving.

“Why did she do that? Threaten your Mom?”

Beth grunted, made a significant move to the right. Leah mirrored her. “I know what you’re doing. Is Leanne even your name?”

The rain was not letting up and Leah was having to move her feet constantly as the earth that the car, and now she, had churned up grew increasingly wet and sticky. “No, it’s Leah Cornick.”

The name clearly meant nothing to Beth, too young to know the Marrok as anything other than ‘the Marrok’. Leah imagined she had no idea their great and powerful leader was mated. 

“Why are you here?” Beth’s voice rose to a shout. “What does the government want with us?”

Baffled, Leah raised her head a little more than she ought. “The— the _government_?”

Eyes flaring with opportunity, Beth fired. Again, her intentions were so clearly broadcasted that Leah easily ducked it. She almost laughed. Beth let out a little scream of frustration, body jumping up and down as she actually stamped her feet.

“Beth, just put down the gun. Yes, I was in your house—” ‘Our’ house, Beth had said. Who did she include in that? Her dead mother? Casper? Arnold? “We are investigating the deaths in your pack because they were suspicious. Angela was killed there. We know that. By your mom.”

“It was an accident!” This was screamed and the gun was raised again. Beth’s hands were shaking violently now. Though it was hard to tell through the rivulets of rainwater that were running down her face, Leah suspected she was crying.

“Okay, okay, it was an accident.” There had been more than one bullet hole in the wall. Some ‘accident’. “Angela threatened your mom and… she killed her?”

“Angela _hated_ my mom. She was trying to convince Batiste to _fire her_. She was a _bitch_.”

Leah nodded. She was beginning to get the picture. She swiped rain from her eyes. “That would make me mad, too. You didn’t… didn’t have much.”

Bingo. Beth’s eyes lit up fiercely. “We had _nothing_.”

“So your mom shot her.”

The woman shook her hair, her girl-ish plaits dark, wet tails flinging about her head. “ _I_ shot her.”

Ah, damn, Leah thought. “Oh, Beth,” she said, sadly. “And Greg? What about Greg?”

“ _I know what you’re doing!”_ she shrieked again. She fired and, unfortunately did so without her usual excited expression of intent, and the bullet caught the edge of the same shoulder Leah had previously been shot in.

“Fuck,” Leah spat, a curse word she was sure her husband would excuse her for given the circumstances. She was hurting now. Her cheek was throbbing from the earlier graze, she had a _goddamn head wound_ and two silver bullets in her shoulder. And she was wet. She was _so wet._ “Fine. I think you killed Greg, too. I think he told everyone you weren’t the Alpha’s daughter. I think the guy you were having sex with dumped you because he didn’t think you were worth anything. And I think you blamed Greg for this rather than the person whose fault it really was. Your mom, who was a lying, manipulative bitch whom everyone in the pack hated.”

Another scream. Another wildly inaccurate bullet. Leah saw her plan unfold. She would get Beth to lose her temper until she had run out of bullets, then she would take her down. Even wounded as she was, Leah was confident she could easily disarm an inexperienced werewolf child like Beth.

But was to be thwarted. Something – _hands_ – grabbed her ankles suddenly and yanked hard. Leah hit the ground, the air punching out of her lungs. For a brief moment, the stars above swam with alarming speed and then she kicked out frantically, trying to release Arnold’s hold on her, scrabbling for purchase on the ground, perilously aware that she was now the most vulnerable she had ever been.

“She’s the Marrok’s _wife_ , Beth, you little fool,” Arnold shouted at her. “He’ll kill you!”

Beth came around the car, gun lowered in one hand, briefly distracted. “What? _What?_ ”

Leah rammed her foot hard, hitting Arnold in the face, breaking something she sincerely hoped hurt a great deal. And then with a sense of inevitability, she scrabbled up to standing and started running.

*

New plan, Leah thought in resignation, as she zig-zagged through the trees. She didn’t think there was a single chance that Beth would be able to run _and_ fire a gun however a crazy baby werewolf with a revolver was the least of her worries. She was being chased by a more dominant werewolf than she, now. And, unfortunately, she knew precisely how fast Arnold could run and she only had a couple of minutes’ head-start. 

So the new plan was to stay alive – and ahead of Arnold. In her lifetime, Leah had frequently been underestimated by male werewolves, who were often surprised that she could fight as well as she could, that she could shoot, that she could run. For two hundred years she had honed herself into being one of Bran’s tools, thinking that if he couldn’t love her, then he could find her too useful to ignore.

But she made sure never to overestimate herself. She didn’t deliberately pit herself against male werewolves, frequently stronger than she. In better condition, she might stand a chance in a fight against Arnold but her dominant arm was weakened by the bullets in her shoulder and she was on unfamiliar territory.

At home, Leah always carried a knife with her when she went about her business in Aspen Creek. She had long, long learned it paid to be armed at all times, even if it was just a three-inch blade tucked into her boot. She had no blade here. She needed to keep Arnold occupied until back-up arrived in the form of her husband, the man who had stood up in church just over a century ago and vowed to honor and protect her. 

So running it was. Running she could do.

To give Bran a fighting chance of finding her, Leah started to make a wide, curving turn to the left, intending to circle back on herself. It was a risk – Arnold would likely see and make ground on her - but they were coming up on the edge of the forest, the trees becoming sparser, which meant they would be breaking out into the suburbs soon. Two bloody figures running at inhuman pace and a woman with a gun was the sort of thing that would make it onto social media in no time, and then on to breaking local news. Ideally, the Marrok’s wife should avoid creating a national incident. She did _try_ not to create additional work for her husband.

Unlike home, the land here was reasonably flat and unchallenging. She was grateful, too, that she had decided Leanne’s footwear of choice was an ever-practical sneaker so at least she wasn’t running in a heeled boot or something.

Her shoulder hurt. She ignored it. Her head was a pounding agony. She ignored that too.

A shot fired out behind her and Leah flinched automatically but it missed her by a country mile. Six bullets. None left. Probably. Unless Beth had taken the time to re-load, which seemed unlikely. Leah’s feet met a track through the forest, probably a nice Sunday-afternoon family trail, and she was able to pick up some more speed.

Her husband’s arrival was anti-climatic, as far as Leah was concerned. One moment she was running by herself, the next Bran’s wolf appeared beside her, easily keeping up. She glanced down at him, once, and then he simply turned and shot off into the trees on her left. _I’ll deal with_ _Arnold_ , he told her.

Even without his voice in her hamburger-meat-raw head, she would have guessed that was his intention. They had fought together many times before to know how to divide and conquer as necessary.

Now she just had to deal with Beth.

Leah turned off the trail, back into the trees. For what she needed to do, being on a public path was unwise. She just needed to get a little cover. In the distance, she heard the snarl of her husband’s wolf and grimly smiled.

When she found a suitable cluster of trees that would give her something of the element of surprise, Leah began her climb, again ignoring the screaming protest from her arms. Adrenaline was all that was keeping her going now. Without it, she would be in trouble.

When she was high enough, she crouched on a sturdy brunch and waited for her prey.

Sure enough, three, maybe four, minutes later Beth ran into view. She was breathing heavily, less from exhaustion, more as a technique for scenting the air. She was very young, Leah thought, not without a pang.

Leah watched Beth crisscross beneath her, running one way and then the next, then re-tracing her own steps. The confusion on her face was plain. She couldn’t work out which way Leah had gone.

The gun was no more, Leah saw. There was nowhere to hide it on her body. Presumably she’d tossed it when she ran out of bullets. They would have to find that again. After.

It took Beth too long to look up. Kara would have thought of it in half the time but then Leah had been training her since she had arrived with them and Bran had been assured of Kara’s ability to maintain her wolf. Last summer, Leah had taken her out into the mountains and they had practiced tracking, culminating in a three-day trek where Kara had followed Leah’s increasingly complicated trail all the way back home. Leah had rewarded her success with a mountain of burgers and fries and Kara had fallen asleep on their couch and slept for nearly a whole day.

Again, Leah thought of how she had wanted Beth and Kara to meet. How they might have something in common. She felt another pang – and quickly dismissed it. She had a job to do now.

Finally, Beth looked up.

“That took you too long,” Leah said, disapprovingly. “Who taught you to track?”

Beth growled. Finally, the wolf was on board. “Get down.”

Leah smirked. “Now why would I do that? I’d much rather sit up here and look down upon you.” To her amusement, Beth looked at the tree, as if deciding whether or not she could climb it herself. “Now, that would be a stupid idea, wouldn’t it? Have you ever tried to fight a werewolf in a tree?”

Much like earlier, Beth let out a scream of rage, her hands balled up at her sides. “Come down here!”

The humor dropped from Leah’s face. Little did Beth realize it, but there was an inevitability to their confrontation. “You don’t want me to come down there, Beth. Tell me what happened with Greg. Did you track him down at the creek? Was there an argument? How did it happen?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

A lie. 

“You waited a long time, didn’t you? To get your revenge on him.” Leah hummed thoughtfully. “Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t plan it. Did you just take a chance? Follow him one day, lose your temper, and pushed him over into the creek?”

Beneath her, Beth started to pacing. She could see her mouthing something but no words, no sounds, were coming out.

Leah bounced on her haunches, testing the movement. She didn’t want her legs to tense up. The tree branch creaked slightly but was otherwise stable. She wondered what was going on with Bran and Arnold. She wondered if Bran had killed him. Arnold had certainly seemed to care more about Beth’s welfare than Leah’s.

Beth stopped. She looked up and tilted her head coyly. “I’ll tell you what you want to know if you come down here,” Beth said, in a moment of what she thought was cleverness.

“Oh, you will, will you?” Leah murmured, the inescapable ending creeping closer. She bounced once more and then sprung from the tree, clearly surprising Beth who took several steps back.

Leah landed, dropping to a well-practiced crouch before rising back up. “Well, Bethy? What happened with Greg?”

It was strange, this moment. The desire for the wrong-doers to share their wrong-doing. Often because it was a secret they had kept for so long, bottled up, that the slightest easing of that pressure meant it would all come cascading out.

Beth tilted her chin up. “It was an accident. He fell.”

Interesting. She almost believed that was true. “You argued.” Leah thought about the cliff edge and what Bran had repeated of the ghost’s actions. “You pushed him.”

A little nod. “I didn’t— I didn’t plan it.” For a fleeting, hopeful moment, there was a softness about her face. Then it was gone. Anger returned, suffusing her pale skin with a rosy tint. “But he deserved it.”

“Because he told you Batiste wasn’t your father.”

“He ruined _everything_.”

Leah nodded. “And Kirk? He sounded like a waste of space.”

Beth’s top lip curled. “Arnold dealt with him.”

“For you?”

She threw up a hand. “For me. For the good of the pack. Whatever. Kirk was an asshole.”

“He certainly sounded it.” Leah saw a way in. “He shouldn’t have done what he did, Beth. That was wrong.”

Beth was confused that Leah seemed to be agreeing with her. Some of the fight was leaving her body, her fists were unclenching at her sides. She nodded, frantically. “It was. He deserved— deserved to have his head chopped off.” A manic, toothy smile. She enjoyed the thought. “Mom said it was fitting.”

Beth’s mother had died more than ten years ago. “Your mom said that did she? Does she… talk to you a lot?”

Her hands clenched with the swift return of her rage. “She told me you were in our house. _What were you doing in our house?_ ”

Whoops, Leah thought, as Beth made a run for her. She stepped aside at the last minute, calmly, giving Beth a good shove as she passed. Beth stumbled and fell to the ground. She got up almost immediately and attempted another run. She wasn’t thinking – was doing nothing more than blindly following her wolf’s instincts. Another mistake.

Leah allowed this dance to continue for a few minutes until she finally had enough and used Beth’s own momentum to spin her around and pin her to Leah’s chest, her arms wrapped tightly around her, restraining her arms. Beth writhed fitfully, teeth snapping, but with Bran’s power surging through her, she was no match for Leah’s strength.

“Calm down,” Leah commanded.

Neither wolf or human obeyed. In fact, Beth started to kick backwards, a better tactic, trying to get at Leah’s ankles. Leah was almost pleased. Nothing worse than a female that didn’t know how to get herself out of a hold. She waited for Beth to work out that she should throw her head back, try and break Leah’s nose.

“I told you why we were there. Angela was murdered. We saw the bullet holes in the walls. You killed her.” When she was human, Leah realized. A human child, no less. So much for their screening process.

“She was _threatening my mom_.”

“Yes, you said. What was she saying?”

“She wasn’t going to leave. She was going to stay. She was going to _marry him_ and take him away from us.”

So Angela had changed her mind. And she had, what, driven over to Michaela to tell her that? What had May said - that Angela gave as good as she got. It certainly sounded that way. “And then what happened? You shot her? And then what?” Two human women and a werewolf body. Presumably Michaela had known about the pack bonds and wouldn’t have been aware that Batiste had already broken the ones between him and Angela.

“Mom called Arnold. He helped us.”

Now, why would he do that, Leah wondered, frowning. “Arnold… helped your mom? Why?”

Beth’s head shot backwards and Leah turned hers to the side at the last moment, her jawbone bearing the brunt of it. There was no ‘crunch’ of bones breaking but for a nano-second, her vision blurred. Leah shoved Beth away. Her skull couldn’t take another beating. Unconscious, Leah wouldn’t be able to defend herself. Even a baby werewolf could hurt her then.

Beth stumbled forward but kept upright. She turned, grinning with pleasure at having ‘escaped’ Leah. “Did he bring you here? Batiste? To find out what happened to his precious Angela?”

“No. But he knew something had happened to her.” Leah narrowed her eyes. Beth was swaying from side to side slightly. It was unnatural, in a human. The wolf was restless. Too restless. “ _Calm down_ ,” she said, once again pulling from her husband’s authority, speaking directly to the wolf.

She stared at Beth’s face, trying to see if there was a change. Nothing. Damn.

Leah tried again. “ _Be still. Be quiet_ ,” she ordered, as she had once seen Bran do with one of their wildlings.

Beth rubbed at her chest. She looked small and vulnerable, suddenly. “What are you trying to do? You’re making her feel funny.”

“She’s too close, Beth. You’re losing control of her.”

The young woman chewed on this a little moment. Then said, “She makes me feel better. She makes me feel… strong.”

Leah could see the moment it happened. The moment the human snapped and the wolf took control. It was all in the eyes.

Without a second thought, Leah stepped forward and, in a move she had executed more times than she could count, she broke Beth’s neck.

*

Her tears, for there were some, had dried by the time Bran found her. He stood over her, hands loosely clenched at his sides. His face wore that particularly pinched look it did when he was very, very angry.

He was dressed in Charles’s sweats again. She wondered where he had parked the truck. It had to be near for him to have changed into a spare set of clothes.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

She almost shrugged; thought better of it. “Bullets in my shoulder. They can wait.” It was nothing fatal, at least, which was what he was really asking. Leah stroked the side of Beth’s cooling face. “She’s gone.”

“I can see that.” Bran crouched down, touched Leah’s cheek lightly. “The truck is nearby. Shall I carry her for you?”

Leah pressed her lips together as she battled within herself. Then nodded. “Okay.”

Very gently, Bran put his arms underneath Beth’s body and lifted her, managing to tilt her so her head lay against his shoulder like she was asleep. Leah firmed her chin and stood, fruitlessly brushing at her jeans that were soaked with mud and covered in twigs and leaves and blood. She wiped her hands on her sleeves, forgetting of course that her hands were encrusted with blood as well. She gave up.

Bran had parked in what looked like a small parking lot within the forest, one for tourists and day-trippers. He laid Beth gently in the back seats. He’d already put a tarp down, though Charles’s truck had no doubt seen worse.

“Arnold’s in the trunk,” he said, shortly.

She nodded. Of course. She wondered if Bran had killed him, too. Or merely incapacitated him.

Leah climbed in the front passenger seat, effectively guaranteeing they would have to get Charles’s truck detailed before they returned it to him. There was a bottle of water on the floor which she drank half of by the time Bran joined her. Before he turned on the engine, he sat staring out of the window for a few moments. “You scared the living daylights out of me,” he said, eventually.

There seemed to be no appropriate response to that. Bran started the truck.

*

Leah assumed that Bran had ‘called’ ahead in the way only he could with the wolves that he knew. Batiste’s garage was open and he drove straight inside and Lucius pulled down the garage door.

Adrenaline wearing off, the silver was getting to her now and she slid out of the truck, arm tucked to her side, every small movement white-hot agony. She leaned heavily against the pitted wall of the garage, trying to put a halt to the blackening edges of her vision.

Lucius gave her a horrified look. “Leanne, you look really bad.”

“Get a first aid kit, then,” Bran said testily. Lucius hurried off, leaving Bran to stand in front of her. He growled as she tried to focus on him. “I can carry you.”

 _That_ was out of the question, as he well knew. Without responding, Leah eased herself off the wall and walked towards the open door into the house, Bran close behind her.

They made their way to the kitchen. A crowd was gathered, fearful faces turned towards them. Bran jerked his head at Casper. “Your Second is in the trunk. Get him out. Put him into your secure room,” he said.

Casper nodded, once, and his face bore no trace of the mischief of the past. He knew who Bran was, now. He and three others went to do the Marrok’s bidding.

Fergus appeared with a first aid kit and hovered, nervously, his eyes on the floor. “Would you like me to remove the bullets?”

Bran looked at Leah. “The medical professional or me?”

Bran did not like werewolves digging around in her body with implements. He pretended it was fine but even before this so-significant time together, when she was operated on he had to turn away, a rumbling discontent in his chest.

Leah liked Fergus but he was a stranger and this pack had revealed itself to be deeply disturbed. “You can do it,” she sighed.

He nodded and took the first aid kit from Fergus. “Where’s your Alpha?” Bran demanded.

“I am here, Bran Cornick.”

Bran glanced over his shoulder. Batiste stood in the door of the kitchen, looking every year of his age.

“I want all of your people here. We need to cut the rot from this pack or it will not survive it,” Bran ordered.

*

In Batiste’s private bathroom, Leah sat naked in the bath that she had cleaned and watched blood trickle down towards the plughole as Bran doused her with saline. On a towel was a scalpel and some forceps.

“We’ve done this before,” her husband said brusquely, as if she had needed reminding. He took a deep, calming breath. “If you could… really _try_ not to pass out, that would be great.”

Leah rolled her head towards him. “Do you think I do it on purpose?”

“No, but if you _insist_ on being shot then I think you could work harder on being an amenable patient.”

It took her a moment. Bran gave her the smallest of smiles to help her along. “Oh, you’re trying to be funny. Got it.”

Despite this, Leah passed out twice whilst Bran ‘operated’ and he was furious, the kind of pinched-mouth, cheek-ticking fury where he couldn’t speak. Since she was much the same when he was injured, she could hardly complain and she knew it wasn’t really directed at her. He didn’t think she was _weak_. Afterwards, Bran would even be sympathetic. She knew that.

Bullets out, Leah took a quick shower, Bran holding her up against the wall unnecessarily. “I’m fine,” she told him, for she was now the bullets were gone, then realized he wasn’t so much holding her up as he was just leaning against her, face pressed to her wet hair. She patted his shoulder sympathetically. 

Bran taped her up when she was dry and then she dressed in the change of clothes they’d brought in case they went for a run. Bran put back on Charles’s sweats, even though they were stained with her blood and far too big on him. She halted him with a hand and neatly rolled up his sleeves, then rolled the waist-band around a few times so the pants weren’t bunching at his ankles. With inscrutable neutrality, Bran watched her face as she tended to him and said nothing.

“There,” she said, stepping back. In a parody of earlier, he held his arms out of her approval. She smiled and it felt tremulous. “Very nice.”

As they walked down the stairs she watched her husband’s power unfold from wherever it was that he kept it. It was still impressive, no matter how many times Leah had seen it happen. It wasn’t as if he _grew_ taller, it was as if suddenly you noticed he was tall. Noticed the green in his eyes, the bolts of gold in his hair, the magic that pumped from him that declared him Other. Marrok. The most Powerful werewolf in the world. Suddenly, all eyes were drawn to him and then those same eyes dropped to the floor in unquestioning obedience. 

Bran stood in the living room where all the Foxton Lake pack was gathered. “ _Sit_ ,” he commanded.

And they did.

*

On the long drive home, in dribs and drabs, they exchanged the final parts of the story.

“Truthfully, I sent the second series of videos to Mercedes without much thought. I missed her first call, as I was acting chauffeur to Rolf’s wife and child. When I called her back, she explained that there was another ghost in the house, a significantly – to her – more solid one. She was standing on the porch watching me video her. Mercedes said she appeared to be entirely sentient. A dark haired, blue-eyed woman.”

Leah was munching on the snacks they’d picked up from the gas station. She was childishly fond of Cheetos. “Beth’s mom.”

Bran’s fingers tapped the wheel. Then he held out a hand for a lurid orange treat. “You said, before, that Beth had been ‘talking’ to her ghost. We thought it was Angela. But Mercy confirmed that if she had been speaking to her mother’s ghost all this time, it’s possible she may have made her, if not real, then more present.”

Leah sighed. “That makes some sense. She talked about her mom in the present tense, as if she was still there. ‘Our house’, she kept saying. Could she also have been the one who told Beth that we had been snooping?”

Bran nodded. “I believe so.”

The mysteries of the world would never stop surprising Leah. She pressed her cheek against the cool glass of the window. The mark on her face had healed, helped along by Bran. Her shoulder still ached and she had just a hint of a headache but it was a significant improvement on how she had felt when she had finally gone to bed last night. 

“Why did she call Arnold? Michaela, I mean.”

Leah had not joined the interrogation of Arnold. Not because she hadn’t wanted to but because he had been contained in the basement room – the silver in the walls would have affected her more given her recent brush with the poisonous effects. Besides, Bran, Batiste and Casper would have been uncomfortable to be around. Angry, betrayed werewolf men were never pleasant company. A wounded female wouldn’t have helped.

Bran grunted. “You remember the ancestry test turned up some cousins that Beth had never heard of? Arnold recognized a couple of surnames from his extended family. He long suspected that his younger brother had been ‘hooking up’ with Michaela when he visited and that _he_ is Beth’s father.”

Leah thought about the brown eyes in the photograph. And genetics.

Bran nodded, knowing she had made the connection. “This made _him_ her uncle. It was something he was keen to keep from Batiste. He thought it would cause trouble. At the same time, he felt responsible for her and, to an extent, though he disliked her intensely, Michaela.”

Or maybe he had been manipulated by Michaela, Leah thought, and hadn’t realized it until long after she was dead. “So, knowing this, Michaela called him when Beth killed Angela?”

“Exactly. And,” he added, “Angela was living with Arnold at the time. She’d given up the lease on her place and put nearly everything into storage in preparation for leaving. She also didn’t have her own computer - so was using Arnold’s to do her correspondence. Apparently, she wasn’t very technical, so he had set it up for her through his own mail client. He had access to everything.”

“Oh,” Leah sighed. It was so easy to forget that it was only in the last few years that cell phones had become ‘smart’ and before that people predominantly used desktop computers. “Of course. So Arnold sent the email to Stein-Douglas.” That made Arnold entirely complicit, then. “And Kirk?”

“Actually an accident,” Bran said, in lighter tones.

Despite everything, Leah was relieved. “Beth seemed convinced that Arnold had ‘dealt with him’ for her, though.”

“Wishful thinking, perhaps.”

She blew out a breath and they settled into silence once more. Leah turned up the radio a little and finished off her Cheetos. 

They stopped for lunch and, as Leah ate her burger, she thought of Beth’s hatred for fast food and the argument over pizza. She dipped a fry in the Bran’s barbeque sauce and he took the gherkins she had put to the side of her wrapper. “If they were so close, did they plan it? The car accident? And why?”

Bran licked his thumb. “A miscommunication. The person who was behind the ‘tests’ of you was Beth. She had managed to convince Arnold and Casper that she would be best placed to review your capabilities as a female werewolf. It was she who liked to ‘spring’ preparing meals on you, to see how you would deal with it under pressure.”

Leah rolled her eyes. “And to think I blamed the men.”

Bran smirked. “When Batiste over-rode her with his pizza idea, she lost her temper, thinking that you were somehow being given special treatment. I imagine she was also furious that you had been in her house. In his attempt to calm her down, Batiste finally said you couldn’t possibly be put to work in the kitchen again because you were, and I quote, the ‘Marrok’s woman’. _Beth_ , who let’s not forget, was very young, took this to mean that you were working for me.”

It clicked. “Oh, the _government_. She meant _you_.”

“Yes, an impressive grasp of our hierarchy. I really must congratulate Batiste for his education of his people,” Bran said drily but with real feeling. Leah suspected the Foxton Lake pack had moved up into his top ten ‘under watch’ packs. “So she duly reported this to Casper and Arnold – claiming that Batiste had told her we were spying on them. _Arnold_ put two and two together and between them – not Casper, who was annoyed but otherwise thought his Alpha knew what he was doing – they put together a plan to trap you and interrogate you.”

She nodded. “So the car accident was planned.” 

“On the spot. Perhaps not as dramatically as it happened but nonetheless.”

Well, that was something. “Then he discovered I wasn’t ‘just’ a spy for you. I was your wife.”

“And that Beth was seriously losing the plot,” he added. “He wasn’t aware of her mother’s ghost. Or that Beth was so seriously unhinged enough to start shooting at a relative stranger.”

No, but they all had known _something_ wasn’t quite right, she thought, thinking of Fergus’s warning. “Was he intending to kill me, do you know? When he was chasing me through the forest?”

Bran said nothing. They had left Arnold to the care of his Alpha. The last thing Bran had said to Batiste was, “You know what you have to do.”

That really told Leah everything.

*

Despite her argument that she was perfectly capable of taking her turn at the wheel, they stayed over in one of Bran’s hotels because Bran’s way of demonstrating care was to completely override her opinions. As usual, travelling under different names meant they received no special attention and were given a small double room overlooking the parking lot. Leah didn’t care. She stripped off and climbed into the soft bed naked and was asleep in seconds, utterly ignoring the self-satisfied look her husband wore at having his decision validated.

Leah woke just before eight the next morning as breakfast was being delivered. Ravenous, she ate everything Bran had ordered for her and half of what he had ordered for himself, which he let her do because food was another way he showed affection.

When she finished, Leah sat back with a sigh. She was a whole new person. “Let’s have sex now,” she announced, wiping her fingers on the stiff cotton napkin.

Unsurprisingly, Bran was amenable to this, but it did mean that they set off rather later than they were expecting. Nothing like a near-death experience to really add an element of celebration to an occasion.

“You spoke to Casper before we left,” Bran said, when they were a couple of hours out from home.

Leah turned down the radio. “Yes. I asked him if he had been sleeping with Beth.” It had been a blunt, to-the-point conversation. Her favorite kind. She suspected, had she been able to spend more time with him, she would eventually grow to like Casper. She always enjoyed the company of men who found her physically attractive. Which, thank goodness, he did and it wasn’t part of a wider plot. She would not be sharing her relish of this fact with her mate.

“And?”

“He said they had been together a few times in the past – casually – but nothing for the last few months.” Casper had looked ashamed of himself, the sad light in his eyes dimming further still as he admitted it to her. “But he did admit it to Arnold only recently, thinking him nothing more than a confidante, and Arnold had been seriously pissed off. Casper had misunderstood. Thought it was jealousy or an inappropriate exertion of his role as Second.”

“Hence the needling about his ‘harem’.”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t explain why I could smell both of them in her room, though.”

Leah put a finger up. “I know the answer to that, too. I looked back at the video I took of her bedroom. There were clothes all over the place – mixed in with the sheets, on the bed. I think they weren’t hers. Arnold wears those navy polo shirts, which are quite distinct. I saw two in her room. I think she was sleeping with their dirty laundry.”

Because she was lonely. She wanted her pack closer to her and had found a solution. Not that it was the same, but sometimes when Bran was away, Leah would sleep in his bedroom for the same reason. She had, on occasion, worn his T-shirts, too.

Bran nodded, his lips curled in a moue of distaste. “I see.”

“And,” like teenage Charles, “she did that to her room herself. Maybe in a temper. Maybe just because she liked to let her wolf out.” Maybe because her wolf made her feel strong, when she didn’t.

So thinking, Leah pulled her cell phone out of her bag and fired off a message to Kara, making plans to see her one-on-one. As the message disappeared, she realized with the first sense of realness that they would be home soon. She had said goodbye to Leanne without realizing it – and, just the same, Bryn would be no more.

Bran held out his hand towards her, distracting her from her maudlin thoughts. “I have no more snacks left,” she told him.

He wiggled his fingers. “I don’t want snacks.”

Curiously, she put her hands in his, then smiled when he linked their fingers. He held their hands together on the seat. “We couldn’t have broken the mating bond, anyway,” Bran said, apropos of nothing.

It took her a moment. “Because?”

“It formed fast. Faster, then I was anticipating.”

Leah hadn’t known that. There had been very little conversation when she and Bran had mated. Just the acknowledgement that it had worked, as expected. “Is that why I got the headaches?”

“Probably.”

She looked at him thoughtfully, remembering their conversation from, oh, a thousand years ago, it seemed. “You will still try again? When we get home?”

He nodded.

“You don’t mind me being in your head?”

Bran shook his head, his thumb rubbing over the back of her hand. “You know me best anyway.”

That was true. “As you know me.”

*

Charles was coming out of Bran’s office when they let themselves into their house. A little bit of tension eased from Leah’s shoulders as she looked around her home. It was even relatively tidy. She imagined she had Charles’s policing, or Anna’s, to thank for that. Left alone, the pack were like teenagers. She’d once found a chicken bone down the back of her couch.

“Welcome home.” Charles’s dark eyes were filled with curiosity. Leah hadn’t spoken to him properly since she had asked him about Batiste’s submission to Change Beth. She presumed neither had Bran. “Are you all right?” This he aimed at Leah. He would have felt her drawing on the bonds.

She nodded. “Your father got to practice his medical skills on me.”

Her step-son nodded seriously. “He has a fine bedside manner.”

“It’s as good as both of yours is,” Bran grumbled, hanging up his coat. He picked up their bag, as if to take it upstairs.

Leah wrestled it back from him. “I’ll do that. You go and check your emails or whatever it is that you’re dying to do.”

She didn’t miss the widening of Charles’s eyes as Bran kissed her temple, stroked a hand down her arm. “Fine. See if Charles would like to stay for dinner. We can debrief him. And Anna,” he added, wandering off.

For once, this idea of ‘family’ time didn’t fill her with dread. Perhaps because she would be part of the story for once rather than a mere bystander or, worse, the subject. “Well?” Leah asked promptly.

Charles paused and she knew it was because he was asking his mate. “We’d be delighted,” he said, eventually.

She lifted her eyebrows. “How gratifying.”

There was a yell from the direction of the office. “Goddamnit, Charles!” came an irate voice.

Without planning it, Leah grinned fulsomely at her step-son. “You moved his bookshelves, again.”

Charles’s responding grin was similarly diabolical. “Absolutely, I did.”

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Did I know this story was going to end up at 60,000+? No, I did not.


End file.
